:ONSERWIVE CHARACTER 



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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



The Conservative 
Character of 
Martin Luther 

GEORGE M> STEPHENSON, Ph.D. 



PHILADELPHIA, PA. 
THE UNITED LUTHERAN PUBLICATION HOUSE 



>• 






COPYRIGHT, 192 1, BY 

THE BOARD OF PUBLICATION OF 

THE UNITED LUTHERAN CHURCH IN AMERICA 




OCT 29 192.1 



§)C!.AS27498 



<1 

fir 



TO 
MY WIFE 



PREFACE 

The purpose of this book is to set forth 
within the compass of a few pages the more 
permanent elements in the work of Martin 
Luther. An effort has been made to single 
out in a life crowded with great events and 
minor incidents the conservative thread run- 
ning through it all. If the attempt has been 
in a measure successful, the reader will find 
here portrayed a man, who at every critical 
moment, fixed his mind on the one purpose of 
restoring the true faith without an abrupt 
break with the past. The reader may form 
his own conclusions as to the principles for 
which the reformer contended; relative to 
their conservative nature he must be bound 
by the testimony of history. 

It would be superfluous to list the many 
works of research which have been consulted 
by the author : they may be found in the ex- 
cellent bibliographies published separately or 
in the standard biographies and histories. 
The author desires to record his gratitude to 



vi PREFACE 

his former teacher, Professor Ephraim Emer- 
ton, whose well-balanced, scholarly lectures 
have stimulated a deep interest in the history 
of the Church and her great leaders. He also 
acknowledges his indebtedness to the late 
Doctor T. E. Schmauk and Doctor W. L. 
Hunton for helpful suggestions and kindly 
criticism. 

George M. Stephenson. 

Minneapolis, Minnesota. 



CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

I. Formative Years 9 

II. The Catholic Reformer 22 

III. The Break with Rome 43 

IV. The Radicals at Wittenberg. ..... 64 

V. The Peasants' Revolt 84 

VI. The Marburg Colloquy 103 

VII. The Augsburg Confession 125 



The Conservative Character 
of Martin Luther 



CHAPTER I 

Formative Years 

Martin Luther was born into an age 
which yearned for a reformation. The 
Church of Christ, from an organization which 
had lifted Europe out of pagan darkness, had 
become a monstrous theocracy, a great sal- 
vation machine which befogged the minds of 
men and obscured the way of salvation. 
Great puritanical movements, such as the 
Albigenses and the Waldenses, had been 
crushed out with ruthless thoroughness; and 
the prophets of a new age, John Wiclif in 
England, John Huss in Bohemia, and Jerome 
Savonarola in Italy, had thundered in vain 
against corruption in high places. 

The man who was destined to revolution- 
9 



10 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

ize society, to defy popes and emperors, and 
to give to the world a new faith was born in 
the little Saxon village of Eisleben on the 
tenth day of November, 1483. In his veins 
flowed the blood of stern, frugal, hardwork- 
ing peasants, who brought up their son under 
a strict discipline. He was taught to regard 
his parents and his superiors with fearful and 
superstitious reverence. He must pray to 
the saints to intercede for him against the 
righteous judgments of a terrible and cruel 
God. Christ's vicar on earth, the pope, and 
his lieutenants, the priests, must be regarded 
with reverent awe. The doctrines of the 
Church were so firmly impressed on his 
young, plastic mind that never in his whole 
life did he waver in his belief in the redeem- 
ing influence of Christianity. In spite of a 
restless mind and years filled with honors, 
triumphs, trials, and discouragements, he 
carried to the day of his death the influence 
of his simple, pious parents. 

Luther's father was a practical, hard- 
headed man, whose education — such as it 
was — had been acquired in the harsh school 
of experience. Self-made man though he 



FORMATIVE YEARS 11 

was, he knew something of the value of an 
academic training and wished to spare his 
son the misfortune of going through life with 
his own meagre learning and limited horizon. 
No doubt the boy's mental alertness and in- 
dustry confirmed him in his determination 
to make the scholar's life possible for him. 

If we may believe Luther's own words 
spoken in after years, the years of study in 
the village school were anything but pleas- 
ant. His teachers were brutal and exacting, 
and their methods crude and uninspiring. 
Beset by harsh taskmasters at home and at 
school, and surrounded by the superstition of 
a primitive community, little wonder that 
the ripe scholar declared that the schools of 
his boyhood were "hell and purgatory." 

When Luther left the home of his parents 
at the age of thirteen to attend school at 
Magdeburg, Eisenach, and the University of 
Erfurt successively, he did not graduate from 
Medieval influence. He was constantly re- 
minded of the Church at these places by the 
large number of convents and monasteries 
that surrounded him. At the old and fam- 
ous University of Erfurt, where he enrolled 



12 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

at the age of seventeen, he came under the 
influence of the Occamist, or Nominalist, 
school of philosophy, which he absorbed so 
thoroughly that, in spite of his repudiation of 
its theology, he never entirely shook it off. 
His practical and logical mind was not at- 
tracted by the more speculative and theoret- 
ical studies, but moved rather in the groove 
of those subjects which sharpen the intellect 
by logical analysis. His strong, clear intel- 
lect was a force to be reckoned with, as his 
opponents who entered the forensic lists with 
him were some day to learn. 

It was Luther's intention while a student 
at the university to gratify the wish of his 
father by entering the legal profession; and 
for a few months after he had completed his 
work for the degrees of bachelor of arts and 
of master he studied law. The measure of 
his success as a jurist can only be conjec- 
tured, for his aptitude for theology and his 
religious nature shunted him into another 
sphere. At the age of twenty-two he de- 
cided to become an Augustinian monk. 

Of all the institutions of the Middle Ages 
none is more characteristic than the monastic 



FORMATIVE YEARS 13 

system. The very fact that Luther entered 
a monastery against the wishes of his father, 
whatever the circumstances may have been, 
shows the cast of his mind. With the pros- 
pect of a career along juristic lines and the 
constant encouragement of his father, cer- 
tainly the young man was not driven to the 
step for financial reasons. The Medieval 
man in him urged him to follow in the foot- 
steps of the saints. We may be certain that 
the young student chose the religious life 
with the solemn conviction which the theo- 
logian terms the " inner call." Having once 
made up his mind to surrender, he did so 
without reservation. With the true spirit of 
a monk he performed the harsh, menial tasks 
assigned to him without a murmur. "If 
ever a monk gained heaven by his monkery," 
he said, M I must have done so." 

Although he confesses that he got little 
spiritual consolation out of his three years' 
stay in the Erfurt monastery, it was not 
without important results: his studies were 
not neglected. It was here that he made his 
acquaintance with the Bible, although he 
had scanned some of its pages in the univer- 



14 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

sity library. Encouraged in the study of the 
Sacred Book by John Staupitz, the vicar of 
the German province of the Augustinians, it 
is said that he became so familiar with its 
contents that he was able to show his brother 
friars the exact spot where every quotation 
was to be found. It can scarcely be doubted 
that even before he left the walls of the mon- 
astery the conviction had dawned upon him 
that the Scriptures had not played enough 
part in the life of the people. Regarded in 
the light of his later veneration of the Bible, 
it must have been the only ray of hope in the 
long hours when he wrestled with himself and 
the doubts about the efficacy of the monastic 
life to work salvation. It has been said that 
Luther reformed Germany because he had to 
reform himself; but twelve years of inward 
strife and varied experience dragged along 
before the master-key which he had found in 
the monastery opened the gates of peace. 

Luther's ability and achievements as a 
scholar gained for him the confidence of the 
vicar, who was also the dean of the faculty 
of theology at the newly founded University 
of Wittenberg. It was through Staupitz 



FORMATIVE YEARS 15 

that in the autumn of 1508 he began his work 
as a teacher in that university. In a short 
time he made a place for himself in the teach- 
ing profession. Students flocked to his lec- 
tures. His very presence was inspiring. The 
brilliant deep-set eyes, ever ready to smile on 
a friend and to flash fire at his opponents, 
left an ineffable impression on those with 
whom he came in contact. With prophetic 
insight one of his colleagues remarked that 
this monk would some day overthrow the 
teaching at all the universities. 

The succeeding ten years of Luther's life 
present him in the combined role of monk, 
priest, scholar, and teacher; and his career 
bears all the earmarks of a sane, conserva- 
tive, earnest young man, with a thirst for 
knowledge and a desire to get right with the 
world. In fact, as Professor Harnack says, 
"in Luther's development down to the year 
1517, there was an entire absence of all dra- 
matic and romantic elements/ ' He shows 
himself to have been a man of poise and de- 
liberation, who regarded with much thought 
the consequences of his successive steps. 

In the autumn of 1511, after his return 



16 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

from the Erfurt monastery, where he had 
been teaching for a time, he was commis- 
sioned by the vicar to make a journey to 
Rome in the interest of his order. Return- 
ing to Wittenberg the following year to re- 
sume his duties as teacher, he was in October 
given the doctorate of philosophy by the uni- 
versity. In addition to his other activities 
in 1515 he burdened himself still further by 
shouldering the duties attendant upon the 
office of district vicar of the Augustinian or- 
der, a field which greatly widened the scope 
of his influence, added a vast amount of 
practical experience, and brought him in con- 
tact with all sorts and conditions of men. 
His frequent absence from the university on 
administrative business was a healthy cor- 
rective to his academic life ; while growing in 
mental stature, he increased in wisdom. 

Several years before he fastened his ninety- 
five theses upon the church door at Witten- 
berg the cardinal doctrine of Luther's theol- 
ogy began to take form : the seed of justifica- 
tion by faith was in his heart, but as late as 
the time of his journey to Rome it had not 
begun to germinate. When he visited that 



FORMATIVE YEARS 17 

hotbed of iniquity he was a true son of 
Rome. At the sight of the city he pros- 
trated himself and cried : " Hail, holy Rome !" 
In the spirit of the Medieval pilgrim he vis- 
ited the shrines and sought to draw on the 
heavenly treasury for the forgiveness of his 
sins. But he returned to Wittenberg a dis- 
illusioned man, although his faith in the 
Church was not shaken. "I was a foolish 
pilgrim, " he says, "and believed all I was 
told." The fact that Luther for the next 
six years lived an active life without having 
his conduct questioned, gaining the con- 
fidence of his associates and that of the Saxon 
government, speaks volumes for his self-re- 
straint and conservatism. For he was pass- 
ing through a terrible personal crisis, a strug- 
gle which might well have caused the very 
stones of Wittenberg to cry out. But he 
kept his experiences to himself, and it was 
not until self-respect allowed him to be silent 
no longer that he publicly declared the solu- 
tion of the awful problem of human sinful- 
ness. 

Luther was not an abstract theologian. 
He was an eminently practical scholar, who 



18 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

studied the Church fathers and the Bible 
with a practical purpose. Finding little or 
no relief for his restless soul in the mechanics 
of salvation furnished by the Church, he 
read and pondered with his mind fixed on sin 
and redemption. He re-discovered the old 
faith of Paul in the New Testament, the 
faith that the Church confessed daily but 
failed to comprehend. 

The keynote of Paul's Gospel, and indeed 
of the whole New Testament, is that all ex- 
ternal observance of the law is worthless un- 
less it is based upon the obedience of the 
heart. The law is a schoolmaster to bring a 
man unto Christ, that he might be justified. 
Salvation comes by faith, which is a gift of 
God, and not by works. It is God which 
imparts freely and without price the will and 
the strength to do his good pleasure. No 
man is justified by the law in the sight of 
God: for the just live by faith. Paul found 
the explanation of sin within him in his 
fleshly nature. "For the good which I would 
I do not: but the evil which I would not, 
that I practise. But if what I would not, 
that I do, it is no more I that do it, but sin 



FORMATIVE YEARS 19 

which dwelleth in me. I find then the law 
that, to me who would do good, evil is pres- 
ent. For I delight in the law of God after 
the inward man : but I see a different law in 
my members, warring against the law of my 
mind, and bringing me into captivity under 
the law of sin which is in my members." 
Now, since there is no way for the nature of 
man of itself to overcome evil, how is Christ 
to effect deliverance? The Apostle's answer 
is that through faith whereby a man identi- 
fies himself with Christ, he becomes a new 
creature, so that it is no longer he that lives, 
but Christ that lives in him. Or, as Luther 
explained it in one of his treatises, u 'Good 
works do not make a good man, but a good 
man does good works; evil works do not 
make a wicked man, but a wicked man does 
evil works' ; so that it is always necessary 
that the 'substance' or person itself be good 
before there can be any good works, and 
that good works follow and proceed from the 
good person, as Christ also says, 'A corrupt 
tree does not bring forth good fruit, a good 
tree does not bring forth evil fruit. ' . 
Illustrations of the same truth can be seen in 



20 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

all trades. A good or bad house does not 
make a good or bad builder, but a good or 
bad builder makes a bad or good house/ ' 

Next to the Bible Luther read the writings 
of Augustine and John Tauler. Tauler was 
a mystic who dwelt on the grace of God, 
while Augustine was accepted by the Church 
as the greatest of all Church writers. The 
effect of Augustine's theology was to em- 
phasize the evil side of man's nature and the 
impossibility of human effort to overcome it. 
He accepts substantially the Pauline solu- 
tion of the problem, that through faith man 
receives the grace of God, entirely apart from 
works. The Church recognized both the 
grace of God and the will of man as a means 
of salvation, but it did not assert which of 
the two was of greater importance. 

As a result of his study of the Bible and 
Augustine and his observations as a monk 
and priest, it gradually dawned on Luther 
that the Church had obscured the way of sal- 
vation by building up a great engine of salva- 
tion, which was a dangerous instrument in 
the hands of unscrupulous and corrupt men. 
Luther's great contribution to the welfare of 



FORMATIVE YEARS 21 

man was in his absolute doctrine of justifica- 
tion by faith, and by faith alone. But he 
would have resented with great indignation 
the assertion that he had invented a new 
means of salvation; quite the contrary, he 
claimed that he was merely bringing back 
the primitive teaching of the Church based 
on the doctrine of St. Paul. It is apparent 
that Luther was no propagandist. He lays 
no claim to originality, but he does maintain 
that he is restoring Christianity to its original 
state after it had been led astray by the 
Romanists. 



CHAPTER II 

The Catholic Reformer 

How soon Luther would have announced 
to Europe his new faith had not the preach- 
ing of John Tetzel, a Dominican friar, driven 
him to it is, of course, impossible to tell. 
Even then it "was only after much hesita- 
tion and deep distress of mind that he felt 
compelled to interfere." His protest against 
what was a recognized scandal was mild and 
conciliatory, and not the spectacular appeal 
of a man who was nursing a personal griev- 
ance or possessed of an itch for notoriety. 
Throughout his entire campaign against the 
abuses and errors of the Middle Ages he 
singled out the doctrines and practices which 
sink down to the level of the common people 
and did not waste ammunition on the fine- 
spun theories of theologians, which the com- 
mon man neither cared to understand nor 
could understand. Luther's heart beat for 
humanity, and he instinctively enlisted in its 

22 



THE CATHOLIC REFORMER 23 

behalf when he deemed the hour for action 
had struck. But Luther was not the type of 
"reformer" who conjures up grievances in 
order to give vent to his wrath. He was 
constructive and conservative. There was 
violence in his writings and speeches, but 
that was because his temperate utterances 
met with violence. His fighting spirit once 
aroused, he was liable to go too far and pur- 
sue his opponents with spiteful and coarse 
invective. 

The turning-point in Luther's life came in 
his thirty- fourth year; up to that time his 
development was gradual and rational. The 
event which brought Luther out was the 
preaching of indulgences by John Tetzel, 
whose name would most probably have been 
lost to posterity but for the fame of his op- 
ponent. 

Indulgences had come to be a part of the 
sacramental system of the Church. The 
sacrament of penance involved several steps. 
The penitent man must be genuinely sorry 
for his sins as a condition preliminary to his 
confession before the priest, who as a minis- 
ter of Jesus Christ is clothed with the au- 



24 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

thority of the Church to absolve him from 
his sins. As evidence of a contrite spirit the 
penitent man ought to perform some peni- 
tential act, as, for instance, a kindly deed or 
a pilgrimage to the shrine of a saint. Essen- 
tially the man makes a sacrifice. If at the 
death of a man the measure of his sacrifice 
is not full, his soul cannot enter into the 
heavenly reward, but passes into an inter- 
mediate state, where it must undergo a proc- 
ess of purification. The soul remains in 
purgatory until the unsatisfied sins have met 
their proper punishment. According to the 
doctrine of the Church, however, the Church 
could remit the temporal punishment by 
drawing upon the " heavenly treasury' ' con- 
sisting of the merits of Christ and the saints. 
This doctrine, so far as it affected the living, 
became a part of canon law about the middle 
of the fourteenth century. The popes on 
their own authority had extended the doc- 
trine to the souls in purgatory. In the 
meantime the practice had grown up of sub- 
stituting a money payment in lieu of the per- 
formance of an act of charity or of a pilgrim- 
age on the part of a penitent person. In 



THE CATHOLIC REFORMER 25 

other words, he is granted an indulgence. 
The purchase of an indulgence costs him 
something, just as almsgiving entails a pe- 
cuniary sacrifice. The interpreters of canon 
law were specific on the point that an indul- 
gence was merely a remission of the temporal 
punishment due to sin, but not of the actual 
guilt of sin. It never became the doctrine 
of the Church that the forgiveness of sins 
accompanies the purchase of an indulgence. 
Moreover, indulgences were applicable to 
the remission of temporal punishment in pur- 
gatory, which appealed strongly to the in- 
stinct of those whose dear ones had passed 
away to avail themselves of the privilege to 
effect their release from their pains. 

Whatever may be said for the " theory' ' of 
indulgences, it cannot be denied that they 
opened the doors for misrepresentation and 
corruption. In the hands of unscrupulous 
preachers they were a great danger to a clear 
understanding of the way of salvation: it 
was so easy to place the emphasis on the 
wrong step. It is also a well-established 
fact that the uneducated and unregenerate 
man, deliberately or unconsciously, turned 



26 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

them to uses entirely contrary to their ori- 
ginal purpose. 

The indulgence which brought Tetzel in 
proximity to Martin Luther's parish was 
proclaimed by Pope Leo X in order to get 
money for the building of the new Church of 
St. Peter. The circumstances of the affair 
were scandalous. There never was a more 
bare-faced money-making scheme. In the 
words of a scholarly Catholic historian, "it 
was a transaction which certainly was un- 
worthy of so sacred a cause as that of an 
Indulgence. " 

The circumstances were as follows: The 
pope had entrusted the proclamation of the 
indulgence in the dioceses of Mayence and 
Magdeburg to Archbishop Albert of Brand- 
enburg, a prince of the house of Hohenzol- 
lern. This ambitious and worldly-minded 
man had succeeded in having himself chosen 
to three of the most important Church of- 
fices in the empire, notwithstanding the fact 
that a plurality of benefices was in violation 
of canon law and that the youth of the prince 
forbade him to hold even one of these posi- 
tions. In order to secure the confirmation 



THE CATHOLIC REFORMER 27 

of the pope to these offices, he was compelled 
to make a very heavy payment to the Roman 
court, a sum which he borrowed from the 
banking house of the Fuggers in Augsburg. 
When the pope declared the indulgence for 
the benefit of St. Peter's Church, he made 
over to the archbishop one-half of the total 
proceeds of the indulgence in his dioceses, 
with which he could liquidate his debt to the 
Fuggers. 

The methods employed in the sale of the 
indulgences may be explained in the words 
of a Jesuit historian, Hartmann Grisar: 
11 Luther learned many discreditable particu- 
lars concerning the arrangement arrived at 
between Rome and Mayence for the preach- 
ing of the Indulgence and the use to which 
half of the spoils was to be applied. What 
provoked Luther and many others was not 
only the abuses which prevailed in the use of 
Indulgences, about which there was much 
grumbling, and the constantly recurring col- 
lections which were a burden, both to the 
rulers and their people, but also the tales 
current regarding the behavior of the monk 
acting as Indulgence-preacher. Tetzel did 



28 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

not exactly shine as an example of virtue, al- 
though the charges against his earlier life are 
as baseless as the reproach of gross ignorance. 
He was, as impartial historians have estab- 
lished, forward and audacious and given to 
exaggeration. In his sermons, mainly owing 
to his popular style of address, he erred by 
using expressions only to be styled as 
strained and ill-considered. He even em- 
ployed phrases of a repulsive nature in his 
attempts to extol the power of the Indul- 
gence preached by him. In addition to this, 
in explaining how the Indulgence might be 
applied to the departed, he made his own the 
wrong, exaggerated and quite unauthorized 
opinions of certain isolated theologians, put- 
ting them on an equal footing with the real 
teaching of the Church. Such private opin- 
ions, it is true, had also found their way into 
some of the official instructions on Indul- 
gences. At any rate, Tetzel, with misplaced 
zeal, mingled what was true with what was 
false or uncertain. The great concourse of 
people who gathered to hear the celebrated 
preacher also led to many disorders, more 
particularly when, as was the case at Anna- 



THE CATHOLIC REFORMER 29 

berg, the occasion of the yearly fair was 
turned to account in order to publish the 
Indulgence." 

Although the elector of Saxony cherished 
no heretical opinions on the subject of indul- 
gences, he refused to allow Tetzel and his 
followers to invade his dominions for the pur- 
pose of raising money to pay the debts of the 
archbishop. He could not forbid his sub- 
jects, however, from journeying to Jiiterbog, 
a small town across the border, not far from 
Wittenberg, in order to avail themselves of 
the opportunity to purchase indulgences 
when Tetzel, in the spring of 1517, appeared 
there. Although Luther, as we have seen, 
was not ignorant of the character of Tetzel's 
campaign, he refrained from attacking him 
until the consequences affected him directly 
as a Christian priest entrusted with the care 
of souls. Luther as a preacher minced no 
words in condemning the sins of individuals 
and the wickedness of his community; and 
when he was confronted with worldly mem- 
bers of his parish in the possession of Tetzel's 
indulgences, his sense of decency was aroused. 
He felt bound to accept the challenge. The 



30 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

remarkable thing is that his fiery nature was 
held in restraint so long. A less cautious 
and conservative man would have rebelled 
at once; while a man afraid to jeopardize 
his future would have shrunk from any ac- 
tion. On the thirty-first of October, 1517, 
he spoke to the whole world, although his in- 
tentions were far more modest. Instead of 
thundering from the house-tops, he invited 
theologians to discuss with him ninety-five 
propositions, which he formulated in the 
Latin language. 

Although a number of the theses do strike 
at the root of papal practices, the protest was 
couched in conciliatory language, and there 
were other theses designed to conciliate the 
pope. While it is unquestionably true that 
the document as a whole has an evangelical 
tone and is a protest against a mathematical 
reckoning of things spiritual, it is highly 
significant that the word faith does not 
appear, and that there is no appeal to the 
authority of Scripture. In other words, the 
theses, rather than enunciating a new doc- 
trine, protest against putting the old doc- 



THE CATHOLIC REFORMER 31 

trines in a false light, as was done by Tetzel 
and his followers. 

Repentance, says Luther, is the natural 
attitude of a Christian man throughout his 
whole life. Inward repentance, however, 
shows itself outwardly in divers mortifica- 
tions of the flesh ; that is, if there is true re- 
pentance, it will reveal itself. Moreover, 
true contrition seeks and loves penalties, 
rather than liberal pardons which relax pen- 
alties and cause them to be hated. Chris- 
tians are to be taught that the buying of 
pardons is not to be compared in any way to 
works of mercy; that he who gives to the 
poor or lends to the needy does a better work 
than buying pardons; that love grows by 
works of love; that he who sees a man in 
need, and passes him by, and gives his money 
for pardons, purchases the indignation of 
God; that the pope's pardons are useful, if 
they do not put their trust in them. 

Luther does not expressly deny the doc- 
trine of purgatory, but he would greatly re- 
strict the power of the pope over souls in 
purgatory. Preachers of indulgences are in 
error who say that by the pope's indulgences 



32 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

a man is freed from every penalty of sin, be- 
cause if it is at all possible to grant to any 
one the remission of all penalties, it is certain 
that this remission can be granted only to 
the most perfect, that is, to the very fewest. 
Therefore, the pope can remit only those 
penalties in purgatory which have been im- 
posed by himself. Who knows, asks Luther, 
whether all the souls in purgatory wish to be 
bought out of it? Alluding to the exag- 
gerated statements of Tetzel, the assertion 
that, so soon as the penny jingles into the 
money-box, the soul flies out of purgatory, is 
condemned as unwarranted by the doctrine 
of the Church. On the contrary, it is certain 
that when the penny jingles into the money- 
box, gain and avarice can be increased. 
Every true Christian, whether living or dead, 
has part in all the blessings of Christ and the 
Church; and this is granted him by God, 
even without letters of pardon, although 
these are not to be despised. 

If indulgences were preached according to 
the true spirit of the doctrine of the Church, 
the position of the pope would not be com- 



THE CATHOLIC REFORMER 33 

promised nor would the laity propound such 
embarrassing questions as the following: 

" Why does not the pope empty purgatory, 
for the sake of holy love and of the dire need 
of souls that are there, if he redeems an in- 
finite number of souls for the sake of miser- 
able money with which to build a Church ?" 

"Why does not the pope, whose wealth is 
to-day greater than the riches of the richest, 
build just this one Church of St. Peter with 
his own money, rather than with the money 
of poor believers?" 

1 ' What greater blessing could come to the 
Church than if the pope were to do a hundred 
times a day what he now does once, and be- 
stow on every believer these remissions and 
participations ?" 

"Since the pope, by his pardons, seeks the 
salvation of souls rather than money, why 
does he suspend the indulgences and pardons 
granted heretofore, since these have equal 
efficacy ?" 

The ninetieth thesis is prophetic in view of 
the reception accorded the theses and the 
treatment of their author by the officials of 
the Church. "To repress these arguments 



34 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

and scruples of the laity by force alone, and 
not to resolve them by giving reasons, is to 
expose the Church and the pope to the ridi- 
cule of their enemies, and to make Christians 
unhappy.' ' 

Taking the theses in the large, there can be 
no other conclusion than that Luther was 
fully conscious that he was inviting the anger 
of a powerful and influential element in the 
Church, for he was threatening to dry up a 
very fruitful source of revenue which flowed 
into the coffers of the Church. But even 
had he desired it, it is scarcely conceivable 
that he or any one else could have antici- 
pated their tremendously far-reaching conse- 
quences, awakening as they did the latent 
consciences of high and low, rich and poor, 
learned and unlearned. His method was to 
enter a modest dissent, calling on the en- 
lightened opinion of the age to rally to the 
defence of truth and decency. In spite of 
the audience to which they were addressed, 
the moral earnestness of the popular preacher 
of righteousness crops out. 

It would be difficult to account for Luth- 
er's regret at the rapid spread of his theses 



THE CATHOLIC REFORMER 35 

if he had not declared that he was not clear 
in his own mind on certain points raised in 
them. Not only that, but he repeatedly in- 
sists that he is a loyal son of the Church and 
of its head, the pope. He is attempting to 
clear up a principle which he believes is a 
part of true Catholic doctrine. If he can 
prove that that principle has been perverted 
to the detriment of mankind, he shall insist 
on a return to its purity. In a letter to the 
elector of Saxony he agrees to stop writing 
and promises to confess humbly to the pope 
that he has been too vehement and that he 
did not intend to injure the Church. He will 
go even further : he promises to issue a pam- 
phlet exhorting the people to cleave to the 
Roman Church and to be obedient and re- 
spectful. To Pope Leo, a few weeks later, 
he writes that he would not hesitate a mo- 
ment to withdraw his theses, if by so doing 
he could accomplish the end desired. "But," 
says he, "my writings have become far too 
widely known, and taken root in too many 
hearts — beyond my highest expectations — 
now to be withdrawn summarily. Nay, our 
German nation, with its cultured and learned 



36 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

men, in the bloom of an intellectual re-awak- 
ening, understands this question so thor- 
oughly that, on this account, I must avoid 
even the appearance of a recantation, much 
as I honor and esteem the Roman Church in 
other respects. For such a recantation 
would only bring it into still worse repute, 
and make every one speak against it. . . . 
I also gladly promise to let the question of 
indulgences drop and be silent, if my oppo- 
nents restrain their boastful, empty talk." 
In a letter to his friend Scheurl he rather re- 
grets the spread of the theses, not that he is 
unwilling to proclaim the truth, "but be- 
cause this way of instructing the people is of 
little avail." Had he foreseen all this he 
would have left out some points and gone 
into others more particularly. 

Not even during the Leipsic disputation 
did Luther, in spite of his humiliating treat- 
ment by Eck, who insisted upon uncondi- 
tional recantation, threaten to withdraw 
from the old Church. He declared he would 
enter the debate "with reservation of full 
submission and obedience to the Holy See." 
It was only when his distinguished oppo- 



THE CATHOLIC REFORMER 37 

nents gave full vent to their wrath, and he 
saw that there could be no reconciliation, 
that he declared that henceforth he must 
proceed in earnest " against the Roman pon- 
tiff and Romish pride/ ' Certainly in the 
early years of the controversy Luther's words 
and attitude are not those of a man nursing 
a personal grievance and vaunting ambition. 
He stands for reform, but reform effected 
through calm and mature deliberation, not 
by revolution. His agitation is for a return 
to the original constitution of the Church, 
the creed of the fathers. He could not fore- 
see the social and political upheaval that was 
destined to follow. His desire was to fore- 
stall any such calamity by removing condi- 
tions which might occasion an event of such 
nature. If revision must come, it was better 
to revise the dogma of the Church by its 
friends than by its enemies, who would not 
approach the task with proper reverence. 
Do not misunderstand his position. It was 
not the doctrines themselves that Luther 
would revise, but the perverted practise of 
them. As he later said, "We contend 
against and reject the work of the pope, in 



38 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

not abiding by those blessings which the 
Christian Church has inherited from the 
Apostles." 

It certainly is not to the discredit of 
Luther that his mind wavered at times, and 
that he changed his opinions. His oppo- 
nents unconsciously excited him to search 
history for proofs of his assertions and to dis- 
prove those of his adversaries. As his re- 
search progressed it became clear to him that 
Holy Scripture and the Nicene Creed were 
more sacred than the decrees of Roman pon- 
tiffs. 

The next three years of Luther's life 
brought him face to face with problems that 
would have made the stoutest heart quail. 
His efforts to purify the Church met with no 
sympathy from the head of the Church. At 
first the pope belittled him, but Luther could 
not be jested out of his faith. The imme- 
diate response which his theses awakened 
throughout Germany made him a hero; he 
understood that his cause was the people's 
cause. This fact, together with the delicate 
political situation in Germany, and the evi- 
dent determination of the Elector Frederic of 



THE CATHOLIC REFORMER 39 

Saxony to protect Luther, warned the pope 
that the matter would have to be handled 
gingerly. The action summoning Luther to 
Rome to answer for his heretical opinions 
was reconsidered. Upon the advice of the 
papal legate in Germany, Cardinal Cajetan, 
who was in a position to know the hold the 
Wittenberg professor had on the people, 
Luther was ordered to appear before that of- 
ficial at Augsburg. Apparently Cajetan 
wholly misunderstood the character of the 
man with whom he was dealing, for he re- 
sorted to browbeating and insisted on uncon- 
ditional recantation. In spite of this treat- 
ment, after the termination of the interview 
Luther wrote a respectful letter to the cardi- 
nal, begging pardon for ill-considered words 
and promising to maintain silence, provided 
the same rule was imposed on the men who 
had led him into "this tragic business. " He 
insisted that he desired to remain obedient to 
the Church, but feared that an unconditional 
recantation might subject him to the re- 
proach of not knowing either what he as- 
serted or what he withdrew. 

Upon the failure of Cajetan to break 



40 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

Luther's will, the pope dispatched a special 
envoy to Germany in the person of Charles 
von Miltitz. Again Luther promised to 
make what amends he could, agreeing to let 
the matter of indulgences drop, provided his 
opponents refrained from attacking him; to 
write a humble letter to the pope; and to 
circulate a paper admonishing the people 
to follow the Roman Church. In spite of 
strong provocation to the contrary, it is 
plain that Luther is seeking to avoid a breach 
with Rome. 

The logic of events, however, decided 
otherwise. The break came about by the 
challenge of John Eck, a professor at the Uni- 
versity of Ingolstadt in Bavaria, a scholar 
and celebrated disputant. Considering him- 
self absolved from his promise of silence by 
the attacks of Eck, who called him a fanatic 
Hussite, seditious, insolent, and rash, he ac- 
cepted his invitation to a debate at Leipsic, 
to be held in the early summer of 1519. The 
debate, as is frequently the case, led the dis- 
putants into a variety of subjects. Luther, 
as we have seen, came to Leipsic without 
questioning the papal supremacy, expecting 



THE CATHOLIC REFORMER 41 

that the discussion would concern itself with 
doctrine; but his opponent manoeuvered 
him into a position where he had to commit 
himself on the question of the possession of 
authority. Luther made some rather strong 
statements about the supremacy of the pope. 
He did not deny the Roman pontiff a pre- 
cedence of honor, but pointed to the Greek 
Church and to the ancient fathers who were 
not under his sway. He admitted that there 
is one Church and one head, but that head is 
Christ. The obvious retort was that this 
was the doctrine of John Huss, who had been 
condemned as a heretic by the Council of 
Constance. Luther was obliged to admit 
that the council had wrongly condemned 
some articles taught by Paul, Augustine, and 
even Christ himself. The opportunity was 
too good for the adroit Eck to pass over. 
With all the rhetoric at his command he 
painted Luther a heretic of the deepest die. 
When Eck forced Luther to admit pub- 
licly in self-defense that he was a Hussite, he 
shifted the point of controversy, and made 
the man who was fighting to remain within 
the Church in order to carry on his work of 



42 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

renovation withdraw from its fold to seek 
protection and reform elsewhere. To use a 
Modern political phrase, Luther was readout 
of the party. Eck in common with Cajetan 
and Miltitz failed to convince Luther of his 
errors; he did, however, open his eyes still 
further to the magnitude of the obstacles 
which one by one were rolled in the path of 
reform. His attacks upon the Church were 
step by step forced upon him by his oppo- 
nents. Up to this time Luther's arguments 
had been largely historical; hereafter they 
were to become theological also. 



CHAPTER III 
The Break with Rome 

In the year 1520 Luther crossed the Rubi- 
con: thereafter there could be no turning 
back. This memorable year saw the pub- 
lication of "An Address to the Christian 
Nobility of theGerman Nation," "The Baby- 
lonian Captivity of the Church," and "A 
Treatise on Christian Liberty " and the burn- 
ing of the papal bull. The great reformer 
appears to have made up his mind to clear 
his conscience. The violence of the " Ad- 
dress' ' may be explained by the necessity of 
making a soul-stirring appeal to the people 
of Germany, in whom now lay his only hope. 

"The time to keep silence has passed and 
the time to speak is come, as saith Eccle- 
siastes," writes Luther. "I have followed 
out our intention and brought together some 
matters touching the reform of the Christian 
Estate, to be laid before the Christian Nobil- 
ity of the German Nation, in the hope that 

43 



44 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

God may deign to help his Church through 
the efforts of the laity, since the clergy, to 
whom this task more properly belongs, have 
grown quite indifferent/ ' 

In this, the most important document 
Luther ever wrote, he addresses himself, 
neither to the pope nor to a council, but to 
the lay princes of Germany. It is significant 
that, while he goes over the heads of the 
Church officials, he does not go to the ex- 
treme of appealing to the common people, 
but to the powers interested in the main- 
tenance of order. Reform must come from 
above. There is no effort to awaken the 
mob spirit. He would make use of the estab- 
lished institutions of society — government, 
church, and school — rather than burn them 
to the ground in order to rear an entirely new 
system on the ashes of the old. 

In his characteristically practical way 
Luther puts his finger on the three great ob- 
stacles to the reform of the Church. 

"The Romanists, with great adroitness, 
have built three walls about them, behind 
which they have hitherto defended them- 
selves in such wise that no one has been able 



THE BREAK WITH ROME 45 

to reform them ; and this has been the cause 
of terrible corruption throughout all Christ- 
endom. 

" First, when pressed by the temporal 
power, they have made decrees and said that 
the temporal power has no jurisdiction over 
them, but, on the other hand, that the spirit- 
ual power is above the temporal power. Sec- 
ond, when the attempt is made to reprove 
them out of the Scriptures, they raise the ob- 
jection that the interpretation of the Scrip- 
tures belongs to no one except the pope. 
Third, if threatened with a council, they an- 
swer with the fable that no one can call a 
council but the pope. 

"In this wise they have slyly stolen from 
us our three rods, that they may go unpun- 
ished, and even have ensconced themselves 
within the safe stronghold of these three 
walls, that they may practise all the knavery 
and wickedness which we now see. Even 
when they have been compelled to hold a 
council they have weakened its power in ad- 
vance by previously binding the princes with 
an oath to let them remain as they are. 
Moreover, they have given the pope full au- 



46 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

thority over the decisions of the council, so 
that it is all one whether there are many 
councils or no councils, — except that they 
deceive us with puppet-shows and sham- 
battles. So terribly do they fear for their 
skin in a really free council !" 

In opposition to the first contention, that 
the papacy is above the temporal power, 
Luther maintained that the only distinction 
between the clergy and the laity is that of 
function. There is no essential difference 
between Christians. This is the doctrine of 
the priesthood of the common man. Ordina- 
tion means that the assembly representing 
the Church chooses one to serve the congre- 
gation, die Gemeine, as Luther's Bible trans- 
lates it. To make his meaning still clearer, 
Luther cites a practical example : " If a little 
group of pious Christian laymen were taken 
captive and set down in a wilderness, and 
had among them no priest consecrated by a 
bishop, and if there in the wilderness they 
were to agree in choosing one of themselves, 
married or unmarried, and were to charge 
him with the office of baptizing, saying mass, 
absolving and preaching, such a man would 



THE BREAK WITH ROME 47 

be as truly a priest as though all the bishops 
and popes had consecrated him." 

Regarding the second claim, that only the 
pope can interpret Scripture, Luther denies 
the right of an ignorant and corrupt pope to 
interpret the Bible to the detriment of intel- 
ligent and pious men. This is an appeal to 
the validity of Christian scholarship. 

The third wall, that no one can call a coun- 
cil but the pope, will fall of itself when the 
other two are down. Scripture directs us to 
correct an erring member. Therefore, when 
necessity demands, the first man who is able 
should use his influence to bring about a 
truly free council. "Thus we read in Acts 
XV that it was not St. Peter who called the 
Apostolic Council, but the Apostles and eld- 
ers. If, then, that right had belonged to St. 
Peter alone, the council would not have 
been a Christian council. . . . Even the 
Council of Nicaea — the most famous of all — 
was neither called nor confirmed by the 
Bishop of Rome, but by the Emperor Con- 
stantine, and many other emperors after him 
did the like, yet these councils were the most 
Christian of all. But if the pope alone had 



48 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

the right to call councils, then all these coun- 
cils must have been heretical. ,, 

With brutal frankness the Address deals 
with a vast number and variety of problems, 
in the discussion of which the author reveals a 
wide knowledge of history, politics, doctrine, 
and contemporary conditions. Whether cit- 
ing abuses or proposing reform, he constantly 
invokes the authority of Scripture. ' - For all 
its scathing quality," writes a Lutheran theo- 
logian, "it is a sane arraignment of those 
who ' under the holy name of Christ and St. 
Peter' are responsible for the nation's woes, 
and the remedies that are proposed are, 
many of them, practicable as well as reason- 
able." 

Having demolished the outer fortifica- 
tions, Luther in the "Babylonian Captivity 
of the Church" enters the very portals of the 
Roman Church in order to release mankind 
from the bondage of the sacramental system. 
Discussing each of the seven sacraments, he 
attempts to show how the meaning and ad- 
ministration of certain sacraments have been 
perverted, and how the whole system has as- 
sumed an importance wholly unwarranted 



THE BREAK WITH ROME 49 

by Scripture. Totally rejecting confirma- 
tion, ordination, marriage, and extreme unc- 
tion from the list of sacraments, he accepts 
baptism, the Lord's Supper, and penance. 
A further study of the Bible convinced 
Luther that he erred in retaining penance be- 
cause it had not been expressly instituted by 
the Lord. 

In attacking the most vital spot of Cathol- 
icism the " Babylonian Captivity" marked a 
radical doctrinal departure ; but Luther was 
not yet ready to embrace what ultimately 
became the Lutheran position on the sacra- 
ments. He was heartily in favor of private 
confession, even though it could not be 
proved from Scripture. Indulgences he 
threw overboard. "Some two years ago I 
wrote a little book on indulgences, which I 
now deeply regret having published; for at 
that time I was still sunk in a mighty super- 
stitious veneration for the Roman tyranny 
and held that indulgences should not be alto- 
gether rejected, seeing they were approved 
by the common consent of men. . . . 
Since then, however, ... I have come to 
see that they are nothing but an imposture of 



50 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

the Roman sycophants by which they play 
havoc with men's faith and fortunes. Would 
to God I might prevail upon the book-sellers 
and upon all my readers to burn up the whole 
of my writings on indulgences and to substi- 
tute for them this proposition: Indulgences 
are a knavish trick of the Roman syco- 
phants.' ' 

The last treatise is the most dignified and 
calm of the three. "Nothing that Luther 
has written, " says Doctor Lindsay, "more 
clearly manifests that combination of revolu- 
tionary daring and wise conservatism which 
was characteristic of the man/' It is per- 
haps the most beautiful work Luther ever 
wrote. "A truly religious spirit breathes 
in these pages," writes a French Catholic. 
"Provoking polemic is almost entirely 
avoided. Here one finds again the inspira- 
tion of the great mystics of the Middle Ages. 
. . . He is not a true Christian who 
would venture to disapprove the passages in 
which Luther speaks so eloquently of the 
goodness of God, of the gratitude which it 
should inspire in us, of the spontaneity which 



THE BREAK WITH ROME 51 

should mark our obedience, of the desire of 
imitating Christ which should inspire us." 

With a charming simplicity — almost para- 
doxical of the lofty theme — he writes about 
the Christian faith, which he sums up in two 
propositions. 

"A Christian man is a perfectly free lord 
of all, subject to none. 

"A Christian man is a perfectly dutiful 
servant of all, subject to all." 

Laying it down without qualification that 
a man is justified by faith alone, he makes a 
plea for moderation and toleration in the 
attitude toward the forms and ceremonies of 
Rome. Such things are permissible, pro- 
vided they do not obscure their purpose — to 
bring man into closer relation to God. " Our 
faith in Christ does not free us from works, 
but from false opinions concerning works, 
that is, from the foolish presumption that 
justification is acquired by works. For 
faith redeems, corrects and preserves our 
consciences, so that we know that righteous- 
ness does not consist in works, although 
works neither can nor ought to be wanting; 
first as we cannot do without food and drink 



52 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

and all the works of this mortal body, yet 
our righteousness is not in them, but in faith; 
and yet those works of the body are not to be 
despised or neglected on that account. . . 

" Hence, the Christian must take a middle 
course and face those two classes of men. 
He will meet first the unyielding, stubborn 
ceremonialists, who like deaf adders are not 
willing to hear the truth of liberty, but, hav- 
ing no faith, boast of, prescribe, and insist 
upon their ceremonies as means of justifica- 
tion. . . . These he must resist, do the 
very opposite and offend them boldly, lest 
by their impious views they drag many with 
them into error. In the presence of these 
men it is good to eat meat, to break the fasts 
and for the sake of the liberty of faith to do 
other things which they regard the greatest 
of sins. . . . The other class of men 
whom a Christian will meet, are the simple- 
minded, ignorant men, weak in faith, as the 
Apostle calls them, who cannot yet grasp the 
liberty of faith, even if they were willing to 
do so. These he must take care not to of- 
fend ; he must yield to their weakness until 
they are more fully instructed. For since 



THE BREAK WITH ROME 53 

these do and think as they do, not because 
they are stubbornly wicked, but only because 
their faith is weak, the fasts and other things 
which they think necessary must be observed 
to avoid giving them offence. For so love 
demands, which would harm no one, but 
would serve all men. It is not their fault 
that they are weak, but their pastors have 
taken them captive with the snares of their 
traditions and have wickedly used these tra- 
ditions as rods with which to beat them. . . 
" In brief, as wealth is the test of poverty, 
business the test of faithfulness, honors the 
test of humility, feasts the test of temper- 
ance, pleasures the test of chastity, so cere- 
monies are the test of the righteousness of 
faith. 'Can a man/ says Solomon, 'take 
fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be 
burned ?',...'. Hence ceremonies are to 
be given the same place in the life of a Chris- 
tian as models and plans have among build- 
ers and artisans. They are prepared not as 
permanent structures, but because without 
them nothing could be built or made. When 
the structure is completed they are laid aside. 
You see, they are not despised, rather, they 



54 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

are greatly sought after; but what we de- 
spise is the false estimate of them, since no 
one holds them to be the real and permanent 
structure. If any man were so egregiously 
foolish as to care for nothing all his life long 
except the most costly, careful and persistent 
preparation of plans and models, and never 
to think of the structure itself, and were sat- 
isfied with his work in producing plans and 
mere aids to work, and boasted of it, would 
not all men pity his insanity, and estimate 
that with what he has wasted something 
great might have been built ?" 

These three products of Luther's pen show 
strikingly the development of the man's 
mind. There are successive stages. At 
some places he pauses to explain that he has 
advanced a pace in his view, and admits his 
former errors; and at other points he takes 
pains to explain the fact that, because he has 
turned away from certain teachings of the 
old Church, it does not follow that the whole 
must be rejected. 

Blind, indeed, the papal party would have 
been if it had not perceived that the Witten- 
berg professor was determined to stand by 



THE BREAK WITH ROME 55 

the principles so boldly and clearly pro- 
claimed in his three great works. Ridicule, 
abuse, and threats proving of no avail, the 
pope decided to employ the engine of excom- 
munication. On the fifteenth of June, 1520, 
the papal bull was published. It condemned 
forty-one propositions drawn from Luther's 
writings as " heretical or false, scandalous, 
offensive to pious ears, insulting, ensnaring 
and contrary to Catholic truth ;" forbade 
the reading of his books ; threatened with the 
ban everybody who should support or pro- 
tect him; prohibited him from preaching; 
and threatened him with excommunication 
if he did not repent and recant within sixty 
days after the publication of the bull in Ger- 
many. Luther was now in a position where 
either he had to admit that he was a false 
prophet who had misled thousands, and 
abandon those who at great personal risk had 
stood by him, or bid defiance to his enemies. 
He remained loyal to his conscience. 

His answer was unmistakable and dra- 
matic. In order to announce to Europe his 
contempt for papal decrees, in the presence 
of a large concourse of people, of whom a con- 



56 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

siderable number were Wittenberg students, 
on December 10th, he committed to the 
flames the papal bull and the whole canon 
law. The fire which consumed these docu- 
ments severed the last fibre of the bonds that 
had united Martin Luther to the Church of 
Rome. Henceforth he was to be an irrecon- 
cilable enemy to ' ' Antichrist. ' ' The fearless 
German was free to go about his constructive 
work, to erect a new edifice in place of the old 
one, from whose portals the pope had ban- 
ished him. But although he has turned his 
back upon an ancient institution, he goes 
back to the time antedating its completion 
for material to be used in the construction of 
the new one. Wherever possible he models 
his structure upon the plans of the architects 
which designed the Medieval Church; but 
the foundation rests, not upon the rock of St. 
Peter, but upon faith — faith drawn from 
Holy Scripture. Luther set about to restore 
the Church of the fathers. Could he have 
done so with the aid and co-operation of the 
pope and bishops, he would have done it; 
but when they declined, he became con- 



THE BREAK WITH ROME 57 

vinced that they were not a necessary part 
of the Church. 

Luther's life shows that he did not believe 
that man was made for system, but system 
for man. If a certain system was better for 
the spiritual growth of one man, let him 
abide by that system. His whole idea was 
to reform, not to revolutionize. It is quite 
probable that he would have remained a 
loyal son of Rome had he not rebelled at the 
corruption within the Church. That cor- 
ruption he did not at first attribute to the 
system. When he arrived at that stage, he 
broke with the Church. The break need not 
have come had not the organization as ad- 
ministered by the pope and his advisers of 
the type of Eck been so absolutely inflexible. 

But even after he had taken this momen- 
tous step and had incurred the undying 
wrath and hostility of the adherents of Rome 
he did not, after the fashion of the men of the 
French Revolution, sweep away all vestiges 
of the past. "We are not ashamed of prais- 
ing whatever good we find in the papal 
churches/ ' he declares. But antiquity of it- 
self has no claim, for "then the devil would 



58 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

be the most righteous person on earth, since 
he is now over five thousand years old." 
"If what has been in use, from of old, is to 
be changed or abolished, an indubitable 
proof must be given that it is contrary to 
God's Word. Otherwise, what is not against 
us is for us." "It is dangerous and terrible 
to hear or believe anything contrary to the 
unanimous testimony, faith, and doctrine of 
the entire Holy Christian Church, which, for 
over fifteen hundred years now, it has unan- 
imously held throughout all the world." 
Furthermore, "I believe and am sure, that, 
even under the Papacy, the true Church re- 
mains." "But we contend against and re- 
ject the work of the Pope, in not abiding by 
those blessings which the Christian Church 
has inherited from the Apostles." 

Luther was a leader, not a voice ; he was a 
wind which shook the reed, not a reed shaken 
by the wind. He wanted a change, but he 
was ardent in his opposition to a general 
wave of change. He was equally powerful 
in promoting and resisting change. He did 
not plant many new trees; he cleared away 
the underbrush of Medievalism. Frequently 



THE BREAK WITH ROME 59 

violent and radical in attacking corruption, 
he proceeded cautiously in altering institu- 
tions. Sometimes destructively radical, he 
was always constructively conservative. 

The next stage in Luther's career brought 
him to the city of Worms, whither he was 
summoned by the newly elected Emperor 
Charles V to appear before the imperial diet. 
A great change had come over Europe in the 
hundred years intervening since the appear- 
ance of John Huss before the Council of 
Constance. It was a most extraordinary 
thing that Luther, a condemned heretic, was 
allowed to be heard before the most august 
assembly in Europe. When he set out for 
Worms from Wittenberg on the second of 
April, 1521, it was with the solemn convic- 
tion that he had been called to defend the 
cause of God. His journey of twelve days 
was a triumphal procession. It is a tribute 
to his sturdy character and the dignity of his 
cause that the plaudits of the multitude did 
not turn his head. Weighed down by the 
awful responsibility, the man who appeared 
before the emperor was meek and modest. 
The young emperor, mistaking humility for 



60 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

weakness, declared that Luther would never 
make a heretic of him. 

In the afternoon of April 17th Luther was 
admitted to the hall. On a table in front of 
the emperor lay a pile of his books. The 
only questions he was asked was whether he 
had written these books and whether he 
would stand by them or recant. After the 
titles had been read, Luther, in a low voice, 
acknowledged his authorship. In the reply 
to the second question Luther revealed his 
presence of mind and his deep insight into 
the principle involved. He had come pre- 
pared to be questioned on specific points of 
his doctrines, but he was not prepared to 
answer off hand a single question which was 
to decide his fate and probably the whole 
future of Christendom. His answer, there- 
fore, was that since the question concerned 
faith and the salvation of souls and the Di- 
vine Word, it would be rash and dangerous 
to say anything without due consideration. 
Some have taken Luther's request for time 
for reflection as a sign of weakness. The 
very opposite is the truth. The fact that he 
was denied the opportunity to state his 



THE BREAK WITH ROME 61 

principles and defend them in debate prob- 
ably convinced him that his fate was already 
decided. If the matter was to resolve itself 
into a struggle, not only against the pope, 
but against the emperor, his answer must 
make the issue clean-cut. That very even- 
ing he wrote to a friend, "With Christ's 
help, I shall never retract one tittle! " 

On his second appearance before the diet, 
the following day, Luther was master of him- 
self. He could not retract all his books, 
since some of them even his opponents ad- 
mitted were worthy to be read by Christian 
people. Neither could he condemn those 
books against the papacy and popish pro- 
ceedings without strengthening their tyr- 
anny. "Under cover of this my recanta- 
tion, the yoke of its shameless wickedness 
would become utterly unbearable to the poor 
miserable people, and it would be thereby 
established and confirmed all the more if 
men could say that this had come about by 
the power and direction of your Imperial 
Majesty, and of the whole Roman Empire. " 
The third kind of books had been written 
against individuals who had defended the 



62 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

papacy. He admitted that he had trans- 
gressed the position and character of a Chris- 
tian by the vehemence of his attacks, but he 
could not withdraw them without proof of 
the errors contained in them. 

Enraged by the audacity of the monk who 
dared to dispute things that had been con- 
demned by councils, the papal party de- 
manded an unequivocal answer to the ques- 
tion: Do you recant those books or not? 
Luther's answer was the keynote of Protes- 
tantism. It was noble, convincing, and 
courageous. 

"Well, then, if your Imperial Majesty re- 
quires a plain answer, I will give one without 
horns or teeth! It is this: that I must be 
convinced either by the testimony of the 
Scriptures or clear arguments. For I be- 
lieve things contrary to the Pope and Coun- 
cils, because it is as clear as day that they 
have often erred and said things inconsistent 
with themselves. I am bound by the Scrip- 
tures which I have quoted ; my conscience is 
submissive to the Word of God ; therefore I 
may not, and will not, recant, because to act 



THE BREAK WITH ROME 63 

against conscience is unholy and unsafe. So 
help me God! Amen." 

All further efforts to shake Luther's firm- 
ness were futile. He feared his conscience 
more than papal bulls and imperial edicts. 
He appealed to a higher law — the law of 
Christ revealed in Scripture. His warfare 
against the powers which sought to shackle 
the human mind went on until he wrested 
from them the key to salvation — the open 
Bible. 

The triumph of the papal party at the 
diet of Worms was a foregone conclusion. A 
treaty was signed between the emperor and 
the pope, by which they were to make com- 
mon cause against their enemies, among 
whom Luther was one. The edict against 
Luther stigmatized his doctrine as a cesspool 
of heresies, forbade the printing, selling, and 
reading of his books, and made him an out- 
law. After the diet of Worms the world 
could never be the same. 



CHAPTER IV 
The Radicals at Wittenberg 

For almost a year after he left Worms 
Luther lived in an entirely different world. 
After four years of uncertainty and strife, 
thanks to his friends he lived in seclusion at 
the Wartburg, near Eisenach, where, safe 
from his enemies, he could rest and recover 
his health, which had commenced to break 
down under the strain. 

But Luther was a man of action; he could 
not be idle. His pen was never more prolific. 
Besides writing numerous letters, commen- 
taries on the Bible, and various treatises, he 
began the translation of the Bible from the 
original tongues into clear, idiomatic Ger- 
man, a monumental achievement which 
alone would entitle him to lasting fame. 
"With little apparatus, not even consulting 
previous translations until the first draft was 
finished, " writes Doctor Jacobs, "he worked 

with such rapidity that within three months 

64 



THE RADICALS AT WITTENBERG 65 

the entire New Testament was in idiomatic 
German that to the present hour is the won- 
der of all literary critics. His entire life and 
character are reflected in the style. All his 
attainments are kept subordinate to the one 
object of presenting the thoughts of Revela- 
tion in language that is the simplest and 
most intelligible to all classes of the people. 
In giving the Germans their Bible he gave 
the German language a permanent literary 
form, and, upon the basis of a common lan- 
guage replacing the confusion of dialects 
that had heretofore been current, unified the 
German people.' ' 

At the Wartburg Luther had nothing to 
fear from the papal and imperial party, but 
the conduct of his friends at Wittenberg was 
most disconcerting. Without the steadying 
hand of Luther events moved rapidly. The 
high tension under which the Wittenbergers 
had lived for several years made them easy 
prey for fanatics who were versed in the art 
of popular appeal. Even the man who had 
stood closest to him, the gentle and scholarly 
Melanchthon, was swept on by the radical 
wave. 



66 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

Under the leadership of one of Luther's 
colleagues on the university faculty, Carl- 
stadt, innovations were begun, which accel- 
erated into the wildest excesses. Priests, 
monks, and nuns, declaring themselves no 
longer bound by their vows, entered the 
marriage relation. There was a general exo- 
dus from the monasteries and nunneries. 

Luther's attitude toward the monastic 
vow is highly characteristic of the man. Far 
from regarding it as a useless incumbrance to 
be brushed aside lightly at the call of per- 
sonal convenience, he carefully weighed the 
matter in his own mind and applied the test 
of Scripture. He had no objection to the 
marriage of priests, but there was a difference 
between their circumstances and those of 
the monks. The monk's oath had been 
taken without compulsion. As his mind 
traveled farther and farther away from 
things Romish, however, he became con- 
vinced that such an oath could not be bind- 
ing because it was contrary to the Word of 
God. It was not until June, 1525, — almost 
eight years after he nailed up his theses, — 
that he himself married. Luther's respect 



THE RADICALS AT WITTENBERG 67 

for law and order instinctively turned him 
away from tumult. For this reason he could 
not sanction the methods of the radicals, 
who forced the monks to leave the cloister 
against their will. 

Luther understood, what Carlstadt and his 
followers did not, that the Reformation was 
on trial, Each step away from Rome must 
be taken with caution, citing Scripture and 
invoking clear and cogent reasoning, to pre- 
vent enemies from taking unfair advantage. 
From the Wartburg he wrote: "How I wish 
that Carlstadt in attacking sacerdotal celi- 
bacy would quote more applicable texts. I 
fear he will excite prejudice against it. 

. . . It is a noble cause he has taken 
up, I wish he were more equal to it. . . . 
For what is more dangerous than to invite 
so many monks and nuns to marry and to 
urge it with unconvincing texts of Scripture, 
by complying with which invitation the con- 
sciences of the parties may be burdened with 
an eternal cross worse than they now bear. 
I wish that celibacy might be left free, as the 
Gospel requires, but how to add to that 
principle I know not." 



68 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

As a part of the program to do away with 
the remnants of Romanism, Carlstadt at- 
tacked the celebration of the mass with such 
vehemence that churches were invaded, 
images destroyed, and priests stoned. 

Out of respect for the wishes of the Elector 
Frederic, his protector, Luther refrained 
from public appearance in order to combat 
the work of the fanatics, much as he desired 
to do so. In December (1521), before the 
movement was well under way, he made a 
secret visit to Wittenberg to see with his own 
eyes how affairs were shaping. After a stay 
of several days he returned to his retreat con- 
vinced that the zeal of the leaders would soon 
burn itself out. Events proved otherwise. 
With the advent of the Zwickau prophets the 
fire burned more fiercely and threatened to 
spread to other communities. 

In the Saxon town of Zwickau, about 
eighty miles from Wittenberg, a religious 
movement entirely apart from Lutheranism 
had developed. The members of this sect, 
later called the Anabaptists, were well- 
meaning and sincere, but their doctrines were 
so revolutionary — probably impractical as 



THE RADICALS AT WITTENBERG 69 

taught by their most extreme prophets — 
that their application involved the entire 
reconstruction of the existing political, social, 
and religious order. Intoxicated with the 
new wine of faith, some of their prophets, by 
their crude religious exercises and exhorta- 
tions, brought deserved ridicule upon them- 
selves and discredit upon their more level- 
headed brethren. 

The Zwickau prophets claimed they were 
inspired. They accepted the authority of 
the Scriptures as the declared will of God, 
but they professed to have immediate reve- 
lations from God. The Bible was Luther's 
sole authority; the more extreme prophets 
regarded the inspiration of the Spirit of God 
superior in authority to the WTitten Word. 
The Anabaptist, therefore, could dispense 
with outward organization because he stood 
in direct relation with God. He looked with 
contempt on the ponderous tomes of dogma 
and theological lore. Priest, Bible, and 
Church were unnecessary mediums, because 
each man was a medium. He rejected infant 
baptism because to him it was unwarranted 
by Scripture and unaccompanied by the 



70 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

faith of the individual baptized. The Ana- 
baptist conception of the " Church* ' was that 
of a body of believers who have been regen- 
erated by the spirit. This is the "puritan- 
ical" idea of the Church. It follows, of 
course, that there should be no connection 
between " Church " and state. "There was, 
in fact," writes Professor Vedder, "no re- 
conciling these teachings with those of state 
churches, set up, as they often were, by un- 
worthy princes and ungodly town councils — 
churches in which little or no attempt was 
made to discriminate between regenerate and 
unregenerate. These were reasons enough 
— these were the real reasons — why govern- 
ments everywhere tried to harry the Ana- 
baptists out of their lands.' ' 

When the Zwickau prophets came to Witt- 
enberg, the radicals who were on the ground 
readily joined them. Wittenberg became a 
religious and social laboratory. The stu- 
dents were advised to quit their studies. 
Learning was unnecessary; the Holy Spirit 
would enlighten them. Images and pictures 
in the churches were destroyed. The situa- 
tion speedily passed beyond the control of 



THE RADICALS AT WITTENBERG 71 

the authorities and the conservative ele- 
ment. A strong man was needed. The 
town council sent Luther an urgent appeal 
to return. Without asking the consent of 
the elector and at the risk of his life, Luther 
slipped quietly into Wittenberg, March 6, 
1522, and in a series of eight remarkable ser- 
mons, marvelous for their sense of propor- 
tion, he exposed the fallacies of the prophets 
and brought order out of chaos. 

One of the men who listened to his preach- 
ing wrote: "Dr. Martin's coming and 
preaching have given both learned and un- 
learned among us great joy and gladness. 
For we poor men who had been vexed and 
led astray have again been shown by him, 
with God's help, the way of truth. Daily 
he incontrovertibly exposes the errors into 
which we were miserably led by the preach- 
ers from abroad. It is evident that the 
Spirit of God is in him and works through 
him, and I am convinced he has returned to 
Wittenberg at this time by the special provi- 
dence of the Almighty. " 

It was the irony of fate that Luther, the 
man who up to this time had used all his 



72 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

magnificent force to expose the hollowness of 
forms and ceremonies, felt called upon to ap- 
pear as an apologist for them. The very 
disturbances he had come to denounce were 
in a sense the consequences of his own teach- 
ings. But the methods of reform practised 
by the prophets were destructive of law and 
order. Luther would reform without de- 
stroying. In his own words, reform must 
begin with milk for babes, the pure doctrine 
of charity and faith, after which may come 
the strong meat of drastic law. " Compel or 
force any one with power I will not, for faith 
must be gentle and unforced. ... I op- 
posed indulgences and all the papists, but 
not with force; I only wrote, preached, and 
used God's Word, and nothing else. . . . 
Had I wished it, I might have brought Ger- 
many to civil war. Yes, at Worms I might 
have started a game which would not have 
been safe for the Emperor, but it would have 
been a fool's game. So I did nothing, but 
only let the Word act." 

In the eight sermons he frankly stated his 
dislike for many of the ceremonies and cus- 
toms of the past, but he declared that the 



THE RADICALS AT WITTENBERG 73 

Christian life consists neither in refraining 
from nor engaging in external practices. It is 
better to retain indifferent things than to of- 
fend weak consciences by abolishing them. 
When the Gospel was everywhere adopted 
and understood, all things inconsistent there- 
with would fall of themselves. 

In the first and second sermons he ad- 
dressed himself to the subject of the cele- 
bration of the mass. "Thus there are two 
things: the one, which is the most needful, 
and which must be done in one way and no 
other; the other, which is a matter of choice 
and not of necessity, which may be kept or 
not, without endangering faith or incurring 
hell. In both love must deal with our neigh- 
bor in the same manner as God has dealt 
with us; it must walk the straight road, 
straying neither to the left nor to the right. 
In the things which are 'musts' and are mat- 
ters of necessity, such as believing in Christ, 
love nevertheless never uses force or undue 
constraint. Thus the mass is an evil thing, 
and God is displeased with it, because it is 
performed as a sacrifice and work of merit. 
Therefore it must be abolished. Here there 



74 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

is no room for question, just as little as if 
you should ask whether you should pray to 
God. Here we are entirely agreed : the pri- 
vate mass must be abolished, as I have said 
in my writings. And I heartily wish it 
would be abolished everywhere and only the 
evangelical mass for all the people retained. 
Yet Christian love should not employ harsh- 
ness here nor force the matter. It should be 
preached and taught with tongue and pen, 
that to hold mass in such a manner is sin, but 
no one should be dragged away from it by 
force. The matter should be left to God: 
his word should do the work alone, without 
our work. Why? Because it is not in my 
power to fashion the hearts of men as the 
potter moulds the clay, and to do with them 
as I please. . . . 

"Now if I should rush in and abolish the 
mass by force, there are many who would be 
compelled to consent to it and yet not know 
their own minds, but say: I do not know if it 
is right or wrong, I do not know where I 
stand, I was compelled by force to submit 
to the majority. And this forcing and com- 
manding results in mere mockery, an ex- 



THE RADICALS AT WITTENBERG 75 

ternal show, a fool's play, man-made ordi- 
nances, sham-saints and hypocrites. For 
where the heart is not good, I care nothing 
at all for the work. We must first win the 
hearts of the people/ ' 

In the third sermon Luther considers "the 
things that are not matters of necessity, but 
are left to our free choice by God, and which 
we may keep or not; for instance, whether 
one shall marry or not, or whether monks 
and nuns shall leave the cloisters.' ' Any 
priest, monk or nun who cannot restrain the 
desires of the flesh should marry, and thus 
relieve the burden of conscience. 

"Thus, dear friends, it is plain enough, and 
I believe you ought to understand it and not 
make liberty a law, saying: This priest has 
taken a wife, therefore all priests must take 
wives. Not at all. Or this monk or that 
nun has left the cloister, therefore they must 
all come out. Not at all. Or this man has 
broken the images and burnt them, there- 
fore all images must be burned — not at all, 
dear brother! And again, this priest has no 
wife, therefore no priest dare marry. Not 
at all! . . . God has made it a matter 



76 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

of liberty to marry or not to marry, and thou 
fool undertakest to turn this liberty into a 
vow against the ordinance of God? There- 
fore you must leave liberty alone and not 
make a compulsion out of it; your vow is 
contrary to God's liberty. . . . 

"But we must come to the images, and 
concerning them also it is true that they are 
unnecessary, and we are left free to have 
them or not, although it would be much bet- 
ter if we did not have them. I am not 
partial to them. A great controversy arose 
on the subject of images between the Roman 
emperor and the pope; the emperor held 
that he had the authority to banish the 
images, but the pope insisted that they 
should remain, and both were wrong. Much 
blood was shed, but the pope emerged as 
victor and the emperor lost. What was it 
all about? They wished to make a 'must' 
out of that which is free, and that God can- 
not tolerate.' ' 

These extracts from the Wittenberg ser- 
mons will serve to illustrate their lucidity. 
Proceeding in the same manner in the re- 
maining addresses, he discussed various 



THE RADICALS AT WITTENBERG 77 

other matters which were agitating the minds 
of the citizens, counseling moderation and 
preaching forbearance. 

Luther's daily life measured up to these 
precepts. For some time after his return to 
Wittenberg he retained his cowl and lived in 
the Augustinian monastery. In one of the 
churches mass was celebrated with all the 
old Catholic rites, and his friends were not 
forbidden to attend. 

Luther's attitude towards Roman Catholic 
ceremonies and doctrines appears to be that 
of a "liberal"; but really it is conservatism 
rather than liberalism. It is because of his 
conservatism that he preaches liberalism. 
The paradox is misleading without explana- 
tion. Rather than see the triumph of the 
doctrines of men like Carlstadt and Zwingli, 
which go much farther than his own, he pre- 
fers to adhere to the " faith of the fathers." 
A violent rupture with Rome would result in 
even further innovations. Scripture must 
be the Christian's guide, and in so far as 
Catholic forms and doctrines adhere to it or 
do not oppose it, they are safer than those 
of the extreme reformers. To his dying day 



78 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

Luther never forgot the disturbances at Wit- 
tenberg and Zwickau. 

Although Luther declared that "the 
Church of Christ is found wherever the Word 
of God is preached in its purity and the sac- 
raments are administered according to the 
Word and institutions of Christ," he insisted 
on outward organization. His conservative 
nature would not allow him to subscribe to 
the Modern liberal doctrine that each man is 
his own priest. Quite the contrary, the com- 
mon man needed the guidance and mediation 
of a priesthood, which must administer the 
sacraments and look after the spiritual wel- 
fare of the people. On one phase of the 
Lord's Supper he was even more conserva- 
tive than the Romanists. They had al- 
lowed the sacrament to be administered in 
private, but Luther condemned the practice 
because of the bad moral effect it might have 
upon others. "For," he declared, "through 
time every one might so take advantage of 
the permission, that at length the churches 
would be empty, instead of being the meet- 
ing-place of all, where they make a public 
confession of their faith.' ' The early Chris- 



THE RADICALS AT WITTENBERG 79 

tians in the Acts set an example by coming 
together to partake of the sacrament — again 
appealing to the authority of Scripture. 
"The sacrament and confession should be 
administered by His professing servants, be- 
cause Christ says it was instituted in memory 
of Himself, which is, in St. Paul's words, to 
show the Lord's death till he come; and at 
the same time he condemns those who wish 
to partake of it alone without tarrying for 
one another. And no one can baptize him- 
self. For these sacraments belong to the 
Church, and must not be mixed up with the 
duties devolving on the head of the house/ ' 
To Luther the Church is the community of 
saints because only those are true members 
who are sanctified in the true faith. Its 
members are called, enlightened, and sancti- 
fied through the Holy Spirit. This was the 
ideal Church ; but some sort of Church gov- 
ernment was necessary. The right of pri- 
vate judgment in spiritual matters could not 
be permitted, because there is a norm, fixed 
and unerring, which every Christian is under 
obligation to follow. No one ought to be 
compelled to accept the Gospel, but no one 



80 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

ought to be allowed to traduce it. "If any 
one does so, the magistrate must have him 
up and admonish him, and hear his reasons 
for acting as he does. If he can give none, 
then he must be bound over to silence, so 
that the seeds of dissension may not be 
sown." 

Luther believed that compulsory attend- 
ance at Church services ought to be estab- 
lished by law. The Church is necessary to 
the stability of the state and society. The 
catechism and the decalogue, he declares, 
teach both civic and domestic duties all per- 
sons need to know, whether they believe the 
Gospel or not. It is the duty of the Church 
to warn and admonish such members as fall 
into sin and error, and if this proves ineffec- 
tual, they must be excluded from member- 
ship. 

The stability of the Church would be en- 
dangered if preachers disagree, because the 
people, unable to discriminate between con- 
flicting opinions, would be led astray. Nei- 
ther should the people have the right to dis- 
miss their pastors whenever they felt inclined. 
Preachers of a false gospel, however, were a 



THE RADICALS AT WITTENBERG 81 

curse to the Church and the community, and 
ought to be dismissed. 

In 1525, in response to requests, Luther 
published his " Deutsche Messe," or "Ger- 
man Order of Worship.' ' This was a very 
conservative document, and all the more 
remarkable considering the advanced stage 
of the Reformation when it was given out. 
Luther did not intend that by it an arbitrary 
ritual should be imposed upon all churches, 
but that it should serve as a guide. Gowns, 
candles, altars, elevation of the host, fast- 
days, and other observances not incompati- 
ble with evangelical principles, were to re- 
main unchanged. That Luther should have 
tolerated these remnants of Catholicism at a 
time when so many of his followers were 
exerting pressure of the strongest kind to in- 
duce him to sanction their radical propa- 
ganda, reveals the unflinching conservatism 
of the man. Then, if ever, he had the oppor- 
tunity of making a hero of himself by throw- 
ing the weight of his influence on the side of 
popular demand. But he chose the path of 
unpopularity. 

Luther's conception of the Holy Scrip- 



82 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

tures is briefly stated in his commentary on 
the Small Catechism: "The Holy Scriptures 
are the Word of God, written by the Proph- 
ets, Evangelists, and Apostles by the in- 
spiration of the Holy Spirit.' ' Every text 
must be taken literally. "If a controversy 
occur as to matters in the Holy Scriptures 
and it cannot be harmonized, let it go. This 
is not in conflict with the articles of the 
Christian Faith. For all evangelists agree 
in testifying to the fact that Christ died for 
our sins ; but with respect to His deeds and 
miracles they observe no order/ ' He ac- 
cepted without question all the miracles of 
the Bible. Throughout his entire life he 
shows a profound contempt for the human 
reason without the guidance of the Holy 
Spirit in things of the spirit. "We must not 
investigate concerning the Divine Majesty, 
but must tie our wandering and soaring 
thoughts to the Word. He who attempts to 
speculate concerning the clouds falls into an 
abyss/ ' 

One essential thing in Luther's theology is 
the identification of the Word of God and 
Holy Scripture. This belief was probably 



THE RADICALS AT WITTENBERG S3 

strengthened by the course of the Anabap- 
tists, who distinguished between the two; 
and even Professor Harnack, who through- 
out his discussion of Luther's theology criti- 
cizes him harshly when it tends toward dog- 
matism, excuses his attitude toward the 
Anabaptists, although he does make him 
responsible for a great error. Undoubtedly 
his experience with this radical element 
caused him to hold even more firmly to con- 
servatism. Luther's whole work consisted 
in upholding the due authority of the Bible 
against the authority of man preached by 
the Anabaptists and the authority of the 
Church taught by the Romanists. To 
Luther the revelation of God's laws through 
Scripture was all sufficient to guide mankind 
through life and to eternal salvation without 
the machinery of the Roman Church; but to 
release man entirely from authority would be 
extremely dangerous, not to say impossible. 



CHAPTER V 
The Peasants' Revolt 

In solving the dangerous situation at 
Wittenberg Luther emerged with great credit 
and enhanced prestige. He had vanquished 
the enemies of law and order by his dignified 
conduct and measured words. He carefully 
refrained from personalities. He even con- 
sented to an interview with the prophets, 
whom he seems to have regarded more with 
pity than with hostility. But Luther was no 
trimmer; no man ever clung with greater 
tenacity to his convictions when principles 
were at stake. At every crisis in his career 
his almost uncanny intuition singled out the 
essentials from the non-essentials. Ever 
ready to compromise on non-essentials, he 
was firm as a rock when he judged that the 
vital principles of Christianity were in the 
balance. 

It is the fortune or the misfortune of great 

leaders of men who blaze the way for future 

84 



THE PEASANTS' REVOLT 85 

generations to attract a motley host of fol- 
lowers. For the time being Luther personi- 
fied the hopes and aspirations of serious- 
minded men, just as the pioneers of freedom 
in after years read into the words of Wash- 
ington and Lincoln sympathy for their cause. 
Luther had championed the cause of freedom 
and justice against a tyrannical system which 
oppressed his fellow-countrymen. How could 
he fail to respond to the cries for justice and 
freedom everywhere? 

No phase of Luther's life has been the 
object of such bitter criticism — with the 
possible exception of the bigamy of Philip 
of Hesse — as has his attitude toward the 
Peasants' Revolt of 1525, one of the most 
serious social outbreaks Europe has ever 
seen. "Either Luther is blamed for occa- 
sioning the revolt," says a recent writer, "or 
else he is accused of being actuated by wrong 
motives in denouncing it." It is a paradox 
of Luther's life that, while he was a stranger 
to our ideals of liberty, the Modern world 
owes more to him than to any other man. 
Just as he was surprised and alarmed at the 
rapid spread and enthusiastic reception of 



86 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

the ninety-five theses, he could never have 
dreamt of the far-reaching effects of the 
movement which he inaugurated. He was, 
as we have seen, a man who regarded with 
much thought the consequences of his suc- 
cessive steps, and if he did miscalculate the 
results of his actions, the reason is rather to 
be sought in the restlessness of society and in 
the violence of the opposition. Luther was 
a religious, not a social and political, re- 
former. But men's minds are not divided 
into water-tight compartments. His ideas 
about religious liberty seeped into men's 
political and social thinking. If men were 
equal before the law of God, why were they 
not equal before the law of man? 

Europe was ready for a religious revolution"" 
when Luther was born. Otherwise how can 
we account for the instantaneous effect of 
the theses? The kings of France and Eng- 
land had flouted papal bulls without alienat- 
ing their subjects. Indeed, these nations 
rallied enthusiastically around their kings 
who resisted papal aggression. Nationalism 
was gnawing at the vitals of the Medieval 
system. Likewise within the new-born states 



THE PEASANTS' REVOLT 87 

a new form of society was emerging from the 
ruins of the old. Villeinage in England was 
an anomaly, as the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 
demonstrated. In the Jacquerie in France 
in 1358 the discontent of the peasants was 
made hideous by the most terrible revolu- 
tionary excesses. 

"The frequent insurrections of the peas- 
ants throughout the fifteenth century and at 
the beginning of the sixteenth show plainly 
that the great social revolution of 1525, 
which convulsed almost every corner of the 
Empire from the Alps to the Baltic, was not 
first occasioned by the preaching and writ- 
ings of the German religious reformers/ ' 
writes the Catholic historian, Johannes Jans- 
sen. "Had Luther and his followers never 
appeared on the scene, the spirit of discon- 
tent and insubordination, which had gained 
ground everywhere among the common peo- 
ple, would still have produced fresh tumult 
and sedition in the towns and provinces. 
But it was the special condition of things 
brought about — or rather developed — by the 
religious disturbances, which gave this revo- 
lution its characteristics of universality and 



88 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

inhuman atrocity. . . . When once it 
had become a settled fact that for centuries 
past the nation had been purposely misled 
and preyed upon by its spiritual rulers, it was 
but a slight step further to discovering that 
the whole fabric of the secular government 
also, closely bound up as it then was with 
spiritual rule, was contrived for the sole pur- 
pose of fleecing the lower orders of society, 
and that Divine justice demanded its com- 
plete overthrow." 

"The country population," says the same 
author in another place, "was especially 
ready to respond to the preaching of the 
agitators and to rise in rebellion against all 
existing institutions. The whole body of 
ecclesiastics, from the Pope down to the 
humblest mendicant friar, and every single 
statute and ordinance of the Church, were 
abused and ridiculed throughout the provinces 
in the grossest and most obscene manner; 
in drinking-taverns, in public bath-houses, 
on the market-place, in fields, and lanes, and 
highways, riotous mobs declaimed against 
1 the priests, those servants of Lucifer, those 
dragons of hell, and all their Sodomitish jug- 



THE PEASANTS' REVOLT 89 

gling with saints and idols, prayers and con- 
fessions, tithes and taxes/ The itinerant 
preachers went about representing the in- 
iquities and oppression of the great secular 
lords as altogether intolerable. 'Spiritual 
and secular tyrants and oppressors,' so said a 
scurrilous pamphlet of the year 1521, 'were 
the iniquitous cause of the plague that was 
raging in Germany. ' For at that time the 
discontent of the people was aggravated by a 
deadly pestilence mortality in all the German 
provinces, while in Bavaria no single town 
had escaped the epidemic. In Vienna 
24,000 people had died, and the plague had 
not yet ceased. At Cologne, all along the 
Rhine, in Suabia, in Switzerland, and in Aus- 
tria, the black death was raging/ ' 

The annals of the past testify to the fact 
that all great class struggles are preceded by 
more favorable conditions in the lower strata 
of society. The relaxing of oppression in 
certain regions causes a slipping and faulting 
which produce changes in the entire contour 
of society. Violent pressure either from 
above or below may disturb the entire equi- 
librium. 



90 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

The demands of the peasants, regarded in 
the light of the present day, are entirely rea- 
sonable and just. They demanded the right 
for each parish of appointing and removing 
its own clergymen. Tithes of corn would 
continue to be paid, but the payment of the 
produce of animals, every tenth calf, or pig, 
or egg, or the like, was unjust. Acknowledg- 
ing due obedience to the authorities chosen 
and set up by God, they declared themselves 
no longer serfs and bondmen, but freemen. 
The right to hunt game and take fish was to 
be free to all. Woods and forests belong to 
all for fuel. No services of labor were to be 
more than had been required of their fore- 
fathers; if more service was required, wages 
must be paid for it. Exorbitant rents should 
be reduced, and punishments for crimes 
fixed. All land which had not been lawfully 
acquired was to revert to the community. 

The demands of the peasants met with the 
most stupid and obstinate resistance from 
the ruling powers. In some instances the 
nobles went out of their way to impress upon 
them their superiority. Sympathy begets 
sympathy, and violence begets violence. In 



THE PEASANTS* REVOLT 91 

its early stages the movement was peaceable, 
but in an incredibly short time the torch of 
revolution was carried from place to place 
until the whole empire was enveloped. Rev- 
olution is the harvest time of the irresponsi- 
ble members of society. Criminals, vaga- 
bonds, and the undesirables of every class 
joined the peasants, and by their intemperate 
utterances and fiendish conduct brought 
odium on their cause. When men's minds 
are inflamed and the safety of their families 
is endangered, distinctions are not drawn. 
In the final reckoning the innocent suffer 
with the guilty. 

Germany experienced a reign of terror. 
Castles, monasteries, and churches were 
burned ; towns were sacked ; priests were in- 
sulted; and outrages that beggar descrip- 
tion were perpetrated before the princes 
could combine to restore order. So stupen- 
dous was the rebellion, and so ruthless were 
the methods of repression, that at least one 
hundred thousand people perished. So thor- 
oughly were the peasants subdued that to the 
end of the eighteenth century their lot re- 
mained the most wretched in Europe. 



92 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

Our interest in the revolt centers on the 
part Martin Luther played in it. The peas- 
ants had good reason to expect his sympathy 
and assistance. Not only was he the son of 
a peasant, but his words on certain occasions 
had revealed that he was keenly alive to the 
injustice of the social order. In the " Ad- 
dress to the Christian Nobility" he had 
urged the necessity of a general law against 
the extravagance and excess in dress and 
eating and drinking. In a pamphlet written 
only a few months before the outbreak of the 
revolt he had been particularly severe on the 
avariciousness and selfishness of the com- 
mercial classes. "The regraters, forestall- 
ed, and monopolists/ ' he says, "are public 
robbers and extortioners. Such people do 
not deserve to be called men or to live among 
respectable folk; they are not even worth 
teaching and admonishing, for their greed 
and avarice are so monstrous, so shameless, 
that the evil of it infects others if they but 
stand in the same spot. The secular author- 
ities would do right if they stripped such 
wretches of all they had and drove them out 
of the country/' Furthermore, had not 



THE PEASANTS' REVOLT 93 

Luther defied the canon law and the edict of 
the emperor? 

It seems to be a fact, however, that many 
of the radicals understood Luther's philoso- 
phy of reform, and, expecting no assistance 
from him, could not say enough harsh things 
about the man. Thomas Munzer, one of 
them who had felt the sting of Luther's in- 
vective before, spurned his reliance on the 
Word of God to effect reform. He would 
reverse the order. The tares must be rooted 
out before the harvest. The present order 
must be uprooted before the seeds of the 
Gospel could take root. 

But to enlist the support of the man who 
had worked wonders before would be half 
the battle. His was a name to conjure with. 
Many professed his gospel and quoted his 
writings. They addressed a printed appeal 
to him, which he answered in a straightfor- 
ward way, recognizing the need of reform and 
warning both sides against un-Christian con- 
duct. 

"In the first place no one on earth is to 
blame for the confusion and insurrection ex- 
cept you nobles and lords, you blind bishops 



94 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

and mad priests and monks who, even to- 
day, in your hardness, do not cease to rage 
and rave against the holy Gospel, even 
though you know it is true and that you can- 
not refute it. In addition the secular gov- 
ernment does nothing but tax and squeeze 
so that you may maintain your pride and 
display till the common man neither can nor 
will endure it any longer. The sword is on 
your necks and still you think you sit so 
firmly in the saddle that no one can throw 
you out. Such false security and hardened 
arrogance will break your necks, as you will 
find out. . . . 

"You must reform and submit to the 
Word of God. If you will not do so will- 
ingly, you will have to do so by compulsion, 
either driven by these peasants or by some 
one else. If you would slay them all they 
would still be unbeaten, for God would raise 
up others, since it is He that is punishing and 
will punish you. It is not the peasants who 
have set themselves against you, dear Sirs, 
but it is God Himself who has set Himself 
against you to punish your fury." 

Addressing the peasants, he cautions them 



THE PEASANTS' REVOLT 95 

to be on their guard against false prophets 
and to consider well the path they elect to 
follow. 

"That the government has done wrong in 
resisting the Gospel and oppressing you in 
temporal affairs is true. But you do a far 
greater wrong when you not only resist God's 
Word but tread it underfoot, invade its 
rights, override God, and, in addition, de- 
prive the government of its authority and 
rights, yea, of all that it possesses, for if it 
have lost its authority, what remains? The 
destruction of all order is far worse than in- 
justice in an established order. God's order 
stands : 

11 Be subject not only to good masters but 
also to the evil. If you so do, it is well. If 
you do not you may be able to bring some 
misfortune to pass, but in the end it will un- 
doubtedly fail, for God is just and will not 
suffer it." 

His warning conclusion is that God is the 
enemy both of tyrants and rebels. He ad- 
vises that certain counts and gentlemen of 
the nobility and certain aldermen from the 
cities be selected, who should adjust matters 



96 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

in a peaceable way. If both sides yield on 
certain points, the whole affair, "if it cannot 
be settled in a Christian manner, may at 
least be adjusted with regard for human 
rights and agreements.' ' 

Had Luther's friendly counsel been heeded 
untold misery would have been avoided. 
Perhaps the situation had passed beyond the 
realm of reason. Be that as it may, Lu- 
ther's words fell on ears deafened by the din 
of tumult and battle. Realizing the gravity 
of the situation, he made a preaching tour 
through the seething districts in a last 
desperate effort to stem the tide. He saw 
with his own eyes the destruction which had 
already been wrought, and returned with the 
most gloomy forebodings of what was yet to 
come. Germany was face to face with an- 
archy. 

Luther, the apostle of reform, could not 
afford to allow his name to be used in con- 
nection with revolution. Disregarding all 
personal considerations, he made one mighty 
effort to disentangle the religious reforma- 
tion from civil war and anarchy. Irrespec- 
tive of whether or not he saw, as we now see, 



THE PEASANTS' REVOLT 97 

that much of the peasant program was pre- 
mature and impossible of realization at that 
stage of social development, he cannot justly 
be criticised for ranging himself on the side 
of law and order. No Modern government 
worthy of the name has ever admitted the 
right of its subjects to resort to arms in order 
to resist its duly constituted authorities. It 
may be set down as a fundamental fact that 
Luther's face was set as firm as steel against 
the use of force to effect reform, and a careful 
examination of his whole body of writings 
and speeches will prove it. He may have 
been inconsistent at times — what great man 
is not? — but he was never an opportunist. 

It has been asserted that after his return to 
Wittenberg from his speaking campaign he 
prudently waited a few days, until the cause 
of the peasants was obviously hopeless, be- 
fore publicly taking his stand on the side of 
the authorities. Had Luther been that kind 
of a man he would have waited until the tide 
had turned. The statement can be dis- 
proved in the simplest possible manner. It 
was less than three days after he had aban- 
doned his journey that he wrote his tractr 



98 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

11 Against the murdering and thieving hordes 
of Peasants," in which he condemns sav- 
agely and without qualification the uprising. 
It was written when the hour was darkest, 
when it seemed that only the most extreme 
measures would avail. If the tide had turned 
and the cause was hopeless, what man would 
have jeopardized his popularity and good 
name among the peasants by launching 
against them the most scathing and violent 
pamphlet he ever wrote? Would he have 
exhorted the princes to "stab, smite, destroy 
here, as you can"? 

The peasants, said Luther, deserved death 
for three reasons: (1) They had broken 
their oath of fealty; (2) they had resorted 
to rioting and plundering; and (3) they had 
covered their sins with the name of the Gos- 
pel. In no way did Luther desire an uncon- 
trolled rising of the people. It was the duty 
of the prince and ruler in his own territory to 
protect his subjects against wrongs, whether 
inflicted by the pope, merchants, or nobles. 

The only justification for the unpre- 
cedented harshness of Luther's pamphlet 
against the peasants (if, indeed, it can be 



THE PEASANTS' REVOLT 99 

justified) is the instinctive horror he always 
felt for sudden breaks with the past and espe- 
cially the resort to force. He probably felt 
that the situation called for the sharpest 
weapon he could forge; that anarchy must 
be dealt a death blow in order to rescue soci- 
ety and to save the Reformation. Luther 
always drew a sharp line of demarcation be- 
tween spiritual and secular authority, and 
he ever insisted that it was the duty of the 
Christian subject to be obedient to the secu- 
lar authority unless the men charged with its 
enforcement were manifestly in the wrong. 

In his Address to the Christian Nobility " 
he lays down the Modern principle that 
every person living within the boundaries of 
a state is subject to its laws. He emphatic- 
ally rejects the Medieval idea of a state 
within the state, which the strong rulers of 
the later Middle Ages and of the early Mod- 
ern Era sought to erase from the minds of 
their subjects. " Forasmuch as the tem- 
poral power has been ordained by God for 
the punishment of the bad and the protection 
of the good, therefore we must let it do its 
duty throughout the whole Christian body, 



100 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

without respect of persons, whether it strikes 
popes, bishops, priests, monks, nuns, or 
whoever it may be." As usual he invokes 
the authority of Scripture for his statement. 
St. Paul says: "Let every soul be subject to 
the higher powers/ ' Also St. Peter: " Sub- 
mit yourselves to every ordinance of man for 
the Lord's sake." 

It must not be forgotten, however, that in 
the document just quoted Luther made a 
stirring appeal for reform to be effected by 
the established organs of society; but if those 
who have been entrusted with the adminis- 
tration of their offices are remiss in their 
duties and disregard their oaths, they may be 
called to account and even dismissed from 
office — a fundamental principle of Modern 
constitutional law. 

If the state is a part of the Divine economy 
for man, Luther accepted the logic of the 
situation and held that it is the right and 
duty of the government to wage war in de- 
fence of its subjects and its own integrity. 
In such a war the subjects are bound to offer 
their estates and lives and to conduct the 
war so as to bring the adversary into subjec- 



THE PEASANTS' REVOLT 101 

tion, without, however, resorting to undue 
severity and cruelty. 

We shall not stray far from the truth in 
assessing Luther's part in the peasants' re- 
volt if we single out the controlling motive of 
his life molded in the statue at Worms, 
which represents him armed only with a 
Bible. " There is no passage in Scripture,' ' 
he wrote to Melanchthon from the Wart- 
burg, "where we are commanded to despise 
those in authority, but rather to honor and 
pray for them." 

Luther leaned heavily on the secular arm, 
not only from choice, but from necessity. 
His unshaken determination to stand by the 
ruling powers almost overwhelmed him in 
the fateful year of the Peasants' Revolt. As 
it was, the insurrection had a disastrous 
effect upon the conservative reformation. 
Nothing that Luther could do would ever 
dispel from the minds of the peasants the 
conviction that the man whose gospel prom- 
ised so much for them was anything but a 
traitor to their cause. Even the princes, 
many of them, abandoned the evangelical 
movement, which they believed concealed 



102 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

in its bosom the dagger of revolt. Germany 
divided against itself; the hope of a national 
Church was destroyed in the conflagration. 
But Luther, although robbed of some of his 
hopefulness, never abandoned his conviction 
that in the long run the shield of faith would 
withstand the fiery darts of the wicked. 

After the outbreak of the prophets at 
Wittenberg, says Professor Emerton, "it be- 
came perhaps the most important and dis- 
tinctly the most difficult problem of the 
Lutheran party to show to the world its con- 
servative and constructive side, without 
withdrawing for a moment from its original 
position of hostility to the papal system/' 



CHAPTER VI 
The Marburg Colloquy 

The historian writes in the sand; and 
every age writes its own history. The docu- 
ments of the past — the historian's material — 
reflect the letter but not the spirit of the age 
in which they were written. The supreme, 
and perhaps impossible, aim of the historian 
should be to breathe into the lifeless pages 
which record the words of the world's great 
men their inmost thoughts, conflicting emo- 
tions, the obstacles which loom up before 
them, the personal seasoning, and, in short, 
all those elements summed up in the term 
the ''psychology of the age." 

The student of the Era of the Protestant 
Reformation approaches his subject with a 
perspective which enables him to levy a more 
accurate assessment of values. Herein he 
possesses an undoubted advantage over the 
men who were the instruments of destiny, 
and to whom the future was a closed book. 

103 



104 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

But in proportion to the degree in which his 
age differs in the spirit and conditions of that 
age, his judgment of men may be uncharit- 
able and erratic. The citizens of a nation 
which has demonstrated the practical appli- 
cation of the truth that all men are created 
equal instinctively sympathize with the Ger- 
man peasants, whose demands in their 
essence breathed that spirit. In Luther's 
attitude we see reflected the harsh, unreason- 
able spirit of a time forever past. The dis- 
criminating mind of Professor Emerton, 
however, sensed the true meaning of his ac- 
tion when he wrote : 

" Luther's perfectly sound instinct had 
shown him from the first that the German 
people were not to be carried away by any 
abstractions of democracy. Nor, on the 
other hand, was there any hope of reviving 
the ancient authority of the emperor. Luth- 
er's appeal to the German nobility was based 
on the fact that whatever political virtue 
there was in Germany was to be found in its 
princes, and the response of the princes 
proved them equal to the emergency. The 
call to defend the new religion involved also 



THE MARBURG COLLOQUY 105 

the prospect of complete deliverance from all 
imperial control. 

"The full meaning of the Lutheran move- 
ment is, of course, far clearer to us than it 
could have been to anyone in the year 1520, 
and yet as early as 1525 every one of the 
points of view just indicated had been clearly 
recognized by every thoughtful observer. 
The tendencies were plain ; the question was, 
how soon and how far would tendencies de- 
velop into facts?" 

In a period when society is fluid abstrac- 
tions precipitate into the concrete. Ideas 
become real: individuals personify move- 
ments. Lutheranism, Zwinglianism, and 
Calvinism suggest more than men ; they are 
institutions — civilizations if you please. The 
personality is there, but it has been poured 
into a mold. Leadership is much more than 
a response to the Zeitgeist, but it can never 
be disassociated from it. 

The religious movements in the several 
countries of Europe had many things in com- 
mon, but they were profoundly affected by 
the personality of the leaders and the condi- 
tions peculiar to each country. The basic 



106 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

principles of Calvinism took form in Calvin's 
legal mind, but Calvinism carried a distinct 
flavor in France and Scotland and in the New 
England wilderness. 

In Germany Lutheranism and Zwinglian- 
ism jostled each other. Having much in 
common, they shaded off into each other; 
but the differences were fundamental. They 
remain fundamental to this day, when the 
men and environments which gave birth to 
them have long since passed away. 

Huldreich Zwingli, the Swiss reformer, was 
born on New Year's day, 1484, being thus a 
few weeks younger than Luther. Although 
there are points of similarity between the 
two men, their differences are so elemental 
that it is hardly a stretch of the truth to say 
that about the only thing they had in com- 
mon was enmity to the Roman Church. 
Luther became a reformer in spite of himself; 
he spoke the plain truth at the diet of 
Worms, when he said: "Here I stand. I 
can do no other.' ' He spoke throughout his 
whole life as one who could not help it. His 
terrible struggle with the problem of sin and 
redemption had cut deep lines in his char- 



THE MARBURG COLLOQUY 107 

acter. The bonds of historic Christianity 
held him fast. The thing he sought to avoid 
above all else was an abrupt break with the 
past. Only the compelling sense of respon- 
sibility could jar him loose from the old 
moorings. 

Zwingli approached Christian truth 
through the side-door of humanism. The 
mysticism of the Gospel of John and of the 
Epistles of Paul in his mind were blended in 
a background far different from Luther's. 
Zwingli was the scientist; Luther was the 
mystic. Science and reason bowed to Luth- 
er's Bible; Zwingli's Bible yielded its truth 
upon the application of a more Modern 
exegesis. Luther's rather arrogant state- 
ment that Zwingli was of " another spirit" 
was essentially correct. Zwingli was incapa- 
ble of taking in Luther's conception of an un- 
broken doctrinal connection with the past. 
Luther favored the retention of everything 
not contrary to Scripture, while Zwingli 
would retain nothing not expressly com- 
manded by Scripture. Luther's catalogue of 
"non-essentials" meant little to Zwingli, and 
his list of " essentials" was radically cur- 



108 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

tailed. The meaning of all this is that the 
Zwinglian movement was radical, while the 
Lutheran was conservative. 

The greatest obstacle to the union of the 
German and Swiss movements was doctrinal 
divergence; but another circumstance must 
be taken into account. Zwingli's political 
philosophy was quite different from that of 
the German reformer. Luther fought shy 
of political and social problems. Zwingli 
was a statesman, who believed that religious 
reform should be carried on the wings of 
political action. He was a republican who 
had imbibed the spirit of a self-governing 
community, and he had none of Luther's 
ingrained respect for authority. Luther 
never favored schemes of aggressive warfare 
to propagate his gospel, but Zwingli's mind 
was full of political combinations, and his 
life came to an end on the field of battle, 
whither he had marched with his followers. 
It can readily be understood that Zwingli's 
political activity was distasteful to Luther, 
who read into it a mistrust of spiritual forces. 

Luther had heard of Zwingli and his work, 
but they had never crossed swords until 



THE MARBURG COLLOQUY 109 

1526, when they entered into a public con- 
troversy over the doctrine of the Lord's Sup- 
per. Luther had already acquired a distrust 
of his opponent as an ally of the radical 
Carlstadt. Public discussion carried on at 
long range seldom promotes harmony, and 
in this case the upshot of it all was to con- 
firm the respective parties in their opinions 
and to reveal the utter hopelessness of a 
solution by compromise. 

In his explanation of the Third Article of 
the Apostles' Creed Luther made plain his 
conception of the way of salvation. "I be- 
lieve that I cannot by my own reason or 
strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord, or 
come unto him; but the Holy Ghost has 
called me through the Gospel, enlightened 
me by his gifts, and sanctified and preserved 
me in the true faith; in like manner as he 
calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the 
whole Christian Church on earth, and pre- 
serves it in union with Jesus Christ in the 
true faith; in which Christian Church he 
daily forgives abundantly all my sins, and 
the sins of all believers, and will raise up me 
and all the dead at the last day, and will 



110 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

grant everlasting life to me and to all who be- 
lieve in Christ. This is most certainly true." 

Luther believed in the total depravity of 
human nature and in the absolute hopeless- 
ness of man to obtain salvation by his own 
efforts. Free will without the grace of God 
is able to do nothing but sin. Now since 
man cannot by his own efforts attain unto 
eternal salvation and lead a Godly life, it 
follows that it is only through the grace of 
God manifested in the atonement of the 
Saviour. God would have all men to be 
saved, and freely and without price extends 
his grace to all, but he has appointed certain 
external and visible means through which it 
may be received. The means of grace are 
the Word of God and the holy sacraments. 

Luther, as we have seen, rejected the sac- 
ramental system of the Roman Church, re- 
taining only those " outward signs of inward 
grace" expressly instituted by the Saviour 
himself, as recorded in the writings of the 
New Testament. In the " Babylonian Cap- 
tivity" he retained the sacraments of bap- 
tism, the Lord's Supper, and penance, but in 



THE MARBURG COLLOQUY 111 

the two Catechisms published in the year 
1529 he retained only the first two. 

Luther's slavish adherence to the literal 
words of the Bible led him far away from the 
old Church, but he could not travel to the 
end of the road with Zwingli and those of 
like mind who found no half-way station be- 
tween Rome and reason. Luther's doctrine 
of the "real presence' ' of the body and blood 
of Christ in the bread and wine is fully as 
difficult, if not more so, for the mind of the 
rationalist to apprehend as is the Catholic 
doctrine of transubstantiation, that the 
"substance" of the bread and wine through 
the consecration of the priest are changed 
into the body and blood of Christ, while the 
"accidents" of taste, color, and form remain. 
Luther, who accepted without question all 
the miracles recorded in the Bible, found no 
stumblingblock in the doctrine that "It is 
the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, in and under the bread and wine 
which we Christians are commanded by the 
Word of God to eat and drink." "Why 
should not Christ," he asks, "include his 
body in the substance of the bread just as 



112 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

well as in the accidents? The two sub- 
stances of fire and iron are so mingled in the 
heated iron that every part is both fire and 
iron. Why could not much rather Christ's 
body be thus contained in every part of the 
substance of the bread ?" To make a dis- 
tinction between the substance and form, 
and to say that one changes while the other 
remains, was to Luther an absurd juggling 
with words, a mere philosophical quibble un- 
warranted by the words of Scripture. 

As to the efficacy of the sacrament Luther 
and the Romanists were not so far apart, but 
their views certainly did not coincide. They 
were one on the point that by partaking of 
the sacrament the soul receives food, which 
nourishes and strengthens the new man; but 
Luther laid more emphasis on the subjective 
attitude of the communicant. He denied 
that the sacrament becomes efficacious in its 
being celebrated, regardless of the attitude 
of the individual. He did not, however, 
make the presence of Christ in the elements 
dependent upon the faith of the communi- 
cant. 

Luther, as we have observed, had a pro- 



THE MARBURG COLLOQUY 113 

found contempt for human reason in matters 
of faith. His defense of the real presence is 
not concerned with explanations how it is 
possible ; he is more concerned to deny that 
transubstantiation is the necessary explana- 
tion of that presence. He accepted the lit- 
eral meaning of the words " This is my body " 
and "This is my blood," and had no patience 
with those who gave them a figurative inter- 
pretation, as did Zwingli. 

The intellectual honesty of the man is 
shown in a letter to the Christians of Strass- 
burg, of December 14, 1524: "I freely con- 
fess that if Carlstadt or any other could have 
convinced me five years ago that there was 
nothing in the sacrament but mere bread and 
wine, he would have done me a great service. 
1 was sorely tempted on this point and wres- 
tled with myself and tried to believe that it 
was so, for I saw that thereby I could give 
the hardest rap to the papacy. I read treat- 
ises by two men who wrote more ably in de- 
fence of the theory than has Dr. Carlstadt 
and who did not so torture the Word to their 
own imaginations. But I am bound ; I can- 
not believe as they do ; the text is too power- 



114 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

ful for me and will not let itself be wrenched 
from the plain sense by argument. 

"And if any one could prove to-day that 
the sacrament were mere bread and wine, he 
would not much anger me if he was only rea- 
sonable. (Alas ! I am too much inclined that 
way myself when I feel the old Adam.) But 
Dr. Carlstadt's ranting only confirms me in 
the opposite opinion.' ' 

Christendom for centuries has been di- 
vided into sects. Mankind craves religious, 
political, and social creeds. The denial of 
a creed sometimes affirms another. The 
period of the Reformation was a time when 
men demanded a statement of religious 
principles. This was especially true of the 
rulers. It was important that the reformers 
should clear their skirts of political heresies, 
and to this end they were either called upon 
or felt it necessary to formulate statements of 
their religious principles, in order to avoid 
friction with political authorities. 

The Swiss movement as typified in Zwingli 
flowed in an entirely different channel from 
that of the German Reformation, partly be- 
cause of institutional differences rooted in 



THE MARBURG COLLOQUY 115 

national traits and partly because of the 
character of their leaders. Zwingli could not 
accept Luther's doctrine of the total de- 
pravity of human nature, and his mind was 
unable to follow Luther's Biblical exegesis 
and mystical conception of the Eucharist. 
He rejected altogether the doctrine of the 
real presence. The celebration of the Lord's 
Supper was a great memorial, in which the 
partakers confessed their belief in the sacri- 
fice of the Son of God. According to Zwingli, 
neither the words of Scripture nor the neces- 
sity of man required the belief that Christ 
was corporeally present in the bread and wine. 
God deals with men without visible and ex- 
ternal means. Luther detected in this the 
spirit of the Anabaptists, who taught that 
God enlightens without the external Word. 

The verbal warfare over the nature of the 
sacrament was distasteful and alarming to 
Philip, landgrave of Hesse, who deplored 
factional strife among the Protestants. He 
attached no such importance to the issue. 
It was of far greater importance to empha- 
size the matters held in common, not the 
least of which was enmity to the papacy and 



116 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

the emperor. His mind was occupied with 
plans for a defensive league of Protestant 
princes against the encroachments of the 
Catholic rulers. For this reason he invited 
the men who had been hurling epithets at 
each other to a conference at Marburg, to 
meet on October 1, 1529. 

Zwingli accepted the invitation with avid- 
ity, not because he expected to yield one jot 
or tittle on the question of the sacrament, but 
because he believed in the possibility of com- 
ing to some sort of an understanding which 
would make possible closer co-operation be- 
tween the factions. He would waive certain 
points in favor of political expediency. 

Luther was skeptical of the whole business. 
Political considerations did not appeal to 
him at all. He had written to the elector of 
Saxony that there was no necessity for a 
Protestant league. " Do not, therefore, pro- 
ceed with this league, for it will only incite 
the opponents to form one also, and possibly 
to take measures for self-protection and de- 
fence, which otherwise they would not have 
thought of. Moreover it is to be feared — 
nay, rather, it is almost certain — that 



THE MARBURG COLLOQUY 117 

wherever that turbulent young Landgrave 
has started a league he will discover good rea- 
sons for not only acting on the defensive, but 
for resorting to aggression as he did a year 
ago." By forming an alliance with the 
"Zwinglians who are fighting against God 
and the sacrament as the most inveterate 
enemies of the Divine Word, ... we 
are taking all their ungodliness on our own 
shoulders and making ourselves participa- 
tors therein/ ' 

In accepting the invitation of the land- 
grave Luther wrote that, while the desire for 
unity and peace was laudable, he had little 
hope that the parties could "see eye to eye" 
regarding the sacrament. "They might 
have written us long ago, saying how they 
wished peace, or could still do so, for I cannot 
yield to them, being convinced that our cause 
is right and theirs wrong. Therefore pray 
consider whether this Marburg conference 
will do good or harm; for if they do not 
yield we shall part without fruit, and our 
meeting, as well as your Grace's outlay and 
trouble, will have been in vain. And then 
they will boast, and load us with reproach, as 



118 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

is their wont, so things will be worse than 
ever. ... If this spirit of union should 
result in bloodshed, such action is within its 
nature, as was seen in Franz von Sickingen, 
Carlstadt, and Munzer; and there, too, we 
were blameless." 

Luther entered the colloquy more to 
oblige the landgrave of Hesse and the elector 
of Saxony than out of hope for union. Luth- 
er's mind was settled when he arrived at 
Marburg. Was it out of fear that the essen- 
tial nature of their differences might for one 
brief moment vanish from his mind that he 
wrote with a piece of chalk on the table be- 
fore him, THIS IS MY BODY? Did it sig- 
nify that it was not a question of yielding his 
own opinion, but something far more serious: 
compromising the Word of God? Luther 
not only was adamant in refusing to conceal 
their differences by verbal camouflage, but 
declined to grasp the right hand of brother- 
hood extended by Zwingli, remarking that 
" Yours is a different spirit from ours." 

In pronouncing judgment on Luther's con- 
duct at the conference, it must be kept in 
mind that he was as fully alive to the desir- 



THE MARBURG COLLOQUY 119 

ability of union as was the Swiss reformer. 
But union at the expense of God's Word and 
his own conscience was too great a price to 
pay. During the progress of the conference 
he wrote to his wife that, although he could 
not count the Sacramentarians, as he called 
Zwingli and his followers, as brethren, he 
wished to live at peace and on good terms with 
them. Five years later he wrote to the land- 
grave as follows: "Now your Grace knows 
how anxious I have always been for unity, 
having been much tried by such dissension, 
knowing how injurious it is to Christ's king- 
dom, and that the pope would have been 
humbled long ago had your Grace managed 
to carry through the much-desired negotia- 
tions with Biicer and his friends. And even 
yet I am ready to concede all that I can with 
a clear conscience, but I fancy that even 
among the foreign [Swiss] preachers there are 
few who adhere to Biicer, and both parties 
will perhaps later decry both one and the 
other. 

"Nothing could be dearer to my heart 
than an enduring concord, but if its founda- 



120 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

tion be brittle and precarious, then peace is 
at an end." 

In conclusion it may be permitted to ap- 
propriate the verdicts of three liberal his- 
torians, all of whom reject Luther's doctrine 
of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. 

Professor Harnack writes: "Had Luther 
yielded in the question of the Eucharist, the 
result would have been the formation of 
ecclesiastical and political combinations, 
which, in all probability, would have been 
more disastrous for the German Refor- 
mation than its isolation, for the hands 
that were held out to Luther — Carlstadt, 
Schwenkfeld, Zwingli, etc. — and which to all 
appearance could not be grasped simply on 
account of the doctrine of the Eucharist, 
were by no means pure hands. Great po- 
litical plans, and dangerous forms of uncer- 
tainty as to what evangelical faith is, would 
have obtained the rights of citizenship in 
the German Reformation. Under these cir- 
cumstances the doctrine of the Eucharist 
constituted a salutary restraint. In its lit- 
eral import what Luther asserted was not 
correct; but it had its ultimate source in the 



THE MARBURG COLLOQUY 121 

purpose of the strong, unique man to main- 
tain his cause in its purity, as it had pre- 
sented itself to him, and to let nothing for- 
eign be forced upon him ; it sprang from the 
well-grounded doubt as to whether these peo- 
ple had not another spirit. In the choice of 
the means he committed an error; in the 
matter itself, so far as what was in question 
was the averting of premature unions, he was 
probably in the right/ ' 

These are the words of Professor Vedder, 
who calls Luther a consistent bigot to the 
last: "And, in fairness to Luther, it must be 
added that he had a strong reason, quite 
convincing to his own mind, against the alli- 
ance proposed, or any alliance. He had 
actually persuaded himself that a Protestant 
league would lead to bloodshed rather than 
prevent it; although the avowed purpose of 
the union was purely defensive, and no party 
was to be pledged to anything, unless some 
member were attacked on account of reli- 
gion. It is possible, of course, that a strong 
Protestant league might, in some future con- 
tingency, have been persuaded to engage in a 
policy of aggression, but under all the cir- 



122 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

cumstances Luther's idea seems entirely ab- 
surd and without foundation. Nevertheless, 
we must grant him sincerity and consistency 
in this attitude/' 

Professor Ranke, referring to the refusal of 
the Lutherans to form political alliances 
against the emperor and Catholic princes at 
Marburg and in the years immediately fol- 
lowing, offers the following observations: 
"It is very easy to repeat the censure that 
has so often been thrown upon this decision. 
It was certainly not the part of political 
prudence. 

"But never was a course of action more 
purely conscientious, more regardless of per- 
sonal consequences, more grand and mag- 
nanimous. 

"These noble men saw the enemy ap- 
proach; they heard his threats; they were 
under no illusion as to his views ; they were 
almost persuaded that he would attempt the 
worst against them. 

"They had an opportunity of forming a 
league against him which would shake 
Europe, at the head of which they might op- 
pose a formidable resistance to his projects of 



THE MARBURG COLLOQUY 123 

universal domination, and make an appeal to 
fortune ; but they would not — they disdained 
the attempt. 

"Not out of fear or mistrust of their own 
strength and valor; — these are considera- 
tions unknown to souls like theirs. They 
were withheld by the power of Religion 
alone. 

"First, because they would not mix up the 
defence of the faith with interests foreign to 
it, nor allow themselves to be hurried into 
things which they could not foresee. 

"Secondly, they would defend no faith but 
that which they themselves held; they 
would have feared to commit a sin if they 
connected themselves with those who dif- 
fered from them; — on one point only, it is 
true, but that one of the highest importance. 

"Lastly, they doubted their right to resist 
their sovereign and head, and to trouble the 
long-established order of the empire. 

"Thus, in the midst of the jarring interests 
of the world, they took up a position coun- 
selled only by their God and their own con- 
sciences, and there they calmly awaited the 
danger. ' For God is faithful and true/ says 



124 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

Luther, ' and will not forsake us/ He quotes 
the words of Isaiah, ' Be ye still and ye shall 
be holpen.' 

11 Unquestionably this is not prudent, but 
it is great.' ' 



CHAPTER VII 
The Augsburg Confession 

It remains to consider the most important 
document of the Reformation: the Augs- 
burg Confession. In this connection we are 
concerned with it as perhaps the most strik- 
ing and conclusive evidence of the conserva- 
tive character of the German Reformation 
and of its founder. At the Marburg Collo- 
quy Luther spurned all efforts at compro- 
mise with the radical reformatory movement 
in the face of the strongest kind of pressure ; 
at the diet of Augsburg, the following year, 
his authorized representatives omitted no 
word or act to emphasize how much Luther- 
anism had in common with Catholicism. 

After the diet of Worms Luther was le- 
gally an outlaw, but circumstances prevented 
the emperor from enforcing the edict. 
Charles V was a loyal Catholic and was 
greatly alarmed at the rapid spread of heresy 

in his extensive dominions; but he felt it 

125 



126 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

incumbent upon him to settle the problems 
of more immediate concern before proceeding 
in real earnest against the heretics. At the 
beginning of the year 1530 he decided that 
that time had come. The young man who 
had granted a hearing to the friar of Witten- 
berg in 1521, shortly after his election to the 
imperial office, was now the most powerful 
sovereign in Europe. He had subdued his 
turbulent subjects in Spain; he had emerged 
victorious in the wars with his most ambi- 
tious and powerful rival, Francis I, king of 
France; he had settled his political disputes 
with the pope, and was about to receive at 
his hands the crown of Charlemagne upon 
taking the oath to defend the pope, the 
Roman Church, and all their possessions, 
dignities, and rights; Italy was at his feet; 
everything was favorable to a settlement in 
Germany. 

In January, 1530, Charles issued an invita- 
tion from Bologna, where the coronation was 
shortly to take place, summoning the elec- 
tors, princes, and all the estates of the empire 
to meet at Augsburg on the 8th of April. 
The conciliatory language of the summons 



THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION 127 

indicates that the emperor hoped for a peace- 
ful settlement; but, failing in that, he was 
ready to resort to force. The object of the 
diet was to solve the religious problem, and 
to prepare for war against the Turks, who 
were thundering at the very doors of Chris- 
tendom. The estates were assured that 
11 every man's judgment, view and opinion 
should be heard, understood and considered, 
in love and kindness, in order to bring and 
unite them into a single Christian truth, so as 
to dispose of everything that had not been 
rightly explained or treated, on both sides: 
that a single true religion may be accepted 
and held by us all, and, as we all live and 
serve under one Christ, so we may live in one 
fellowship, Church and unity/ ' 

The Protestant princes accepted the invi- 
tation, with what hopes for harmony and co- 
operation it is difficult to say. The elector 
of Saxony commanded the Wittenberg theo- 
logians to draw up a statement of their reli- 
gious opinions in order that the estates might 
have something definite before them. Luther 
desired to be present at the diet, but, as he 
was under the imperial ban, the elector re- 



128 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

fused to allow him to accompany the party 
further than the castle of Coburg. If diplo- 
matic language could effect a union, the 
selection of Philip Melanchthon to present 
the Protestant cause and to accompany the 
elector was indeed happy. The Augsburg 
Confession is essentially the product of 
Luther, although the matrix which embalms 
the jewels of the Lutheran faith was cer- 
tainly not the product of his rugged and 
sometimes uncouth pen. Luther not only 
approved the Confession, although the final 
form was probably somewhat more conserva- 
tive in phraseology than he wished, but he 
also kept in close touch at all times with the 
proceedings at Augsburg. 

Undeniably the situation of Protestantism 
was critical. Melanchthon worked under 
the most trying circumstances, and had it 
not been for the firm and cheering letters 
from Luther, which bolstered up his irreso- 
lute and timid will, the outcome of the diet 
might have been disastrous. Luther's firm- 
ness at Marburg is frequently mistaken for 
intolerance and bigotry by liberal Protestant 
historians, but they are all but unanimous in 



THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION 129 

approving his conduct at Coburg. Conser- 
vatism and cowardice were not synonyms 
with Luther. 

On June 27th he wrote to Melanchthon: 
" From the bottom of my heart I am inimical 
to those worrying cares which are taking the 
very heart out of you and gaining the upper 
hand. It is not the magnitude of the cause, 
but the weakness of our faith which is at 
fault; for things were much worse in John 
Huss's days than in ours. And even were 
the gospel in as great danger now as then, is 
not He who has begun the good work greater 
than the work itself, for it is not our affair? 
Why then make a martyr of yourself ? If the 
cause be not a righteous one, then let us 
repudiate it; but if it be, why make God a 
liar in not believing His wonderful promises, 
when He commands us to be of good cheer 
and cast all our care upon Him, for He shall 
sustain us?" 

Two days later he writes: "I have re- 
ceived your Apology, and wonder at your 
asking how far one may yield to the Pa- 
pists. For my part I think too much has 
been conceded. If they do not accept it, 



130 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

what more can we do? I ponder this busi- 
ness night and day, looking at it from all 
sides, searching the Scriptures, and the 
longer I contemplate it the more I am con- 
vinced of the sure foundation on which our 
teaching rests, and therefore am becoming 
more courageous, so that, if God will, not a 
word shall be withdrawn, come what may. 

. . • May God so increase your faith 
that the devil and the whole world may be 
powerless against you. Let us comfort our- 
selves with the faith of others if we have 
none ourselves. For some have faith, else 
there would be no Church on earth; and 
Christ would have ceased to dwell with us. 
For if we are not the Church, or a part of it, 
where is it? Are the Dukes of Bavaria, or 
the Pope, or the Sultan the Church? If we 
have not God's word, who then has it? I 
pray without ceasing that Christ may be 
with you. Amen!" 

That the final form of the Confession, as 
read before the diet, was acceptable to 
Luther, may be seen in the letter, under date 
of July 9th, to Justus Jonas, who was present 
at the occasion: " There can never be entire 



THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION 131 

unanimity in doctrine. For how can one 
reconcile Christ and Belial? Perhaps the 
marriage of the priests and the Sacrament in 
both kinds may be left an open question, but 
this is after all only a 'perhaps/ Still, I 
hope that the religious question may be de- 
ferred, and meantime a world-wide peace be 
established. If by Christ's blessing this be 
achieved, then much has been accomplished 
at this Diet. 

11 First, and greatest of all, Christ has been 
publicly proclaimed through our glorious 
Confession, so that the great ones of the 
earth cannot boast that we have fled and 
were afraid to confess our faith. Only I 
grudge you the privilege of being present at 
the reading of this grand Confession.' ' 

On the 25th of June — a great day in Luth- 
eran annals — the Augsburg Confession was 
read. So moderate was its tone that even 
the Romanists were surprised. Yet the doc- 
ument was not colorless. Professor Har- 
nack, who criticizes its scholastic arrange- 
ment and deplores its diplomatic approaches 
to the old Church and the way it treats the 
Zwinglians as naughty children, does not 



132 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

deny that at the most important points "it 
struck the nail on the head." Although not 
originally intended for that purpose, the 
Confession was admirably suited to become 
a Church "constitution" or a creed. Like 
the Constitution of the United States, it 
constituted a framework of principles upon 
which might be reared a superstructure 
suited to the conditions of a given time or 
place. Throughout the whole document 
there is a constant appeal to the authority of 
Scripture. An incident at the diet illustrates 
this very well. When the duke of Bavaria 
was informed by Eck that he could refute the 
Lutheran opinions, not with the Scriptures, 
but with the fathers, he replied: "I am to 
understand, then, that the Lutherans are 
within the Scriptures, and we Catholics on 
the outside?" 

The Augsburg Confession is divided into 
three parts: (1) The preface to the emperor; 
(2) twenty-two chief articles of faith taught 
in the Lutheran churches; and (3) seven 
articles in which are enumerated the abuses 
corrected. 

The preface cannot be interpreted in any 



THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION 133 

other way than as a straightforward assertion 
that the Lutherans sincerely desired union, 
if reconciliation was possible. " Wherefore, 
in obedience to Your Imperial Majesty's 
wishes, we offer, in this matter of religion, 
the Confession of our preachers and of our- 
selves, showing what manner of doctrine 
from the Holy Scriptures and the pure Word 
of God has been up to this time set forth in 
our lands, dukedoms, dominions and cities, 
and taught in our churches. And if the 
other Electors, Princes and Estates of the 
Empire will present similar writings, to wit, 
in Latin and German, according to the said 
Imperial proposition, giving their opinions in 
this matter of religion, here before Your Im- 
perial Majesty, our most clement Lord, we, 
with the Princes and friends aforesaid, are 
prepared to confer amicably concerning all 
possible ways and means, so far as may be 
honorably done, that we may come together, 
and, the matter between us on both sides 
being peacefully discussed without offensive 
strife, the dissension, by God's help, may be 
done away and be brought back to one true 
and accordant religion; for as we all serve 



134 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

and do battle under one Christ, we ought to 
confess the one Christ, and so, after the 
tenor of Your Imperial Majesty's Edict, 
everything be conducted according to the 
truth of God, which, with most fervent pray- 
ers, we entreat of God. 

"In the event, therefore, that the dif- 
ferences between us and the other parties in 
the matter of religion cannot be amicably 
and in charity settled here before Your Im- 
perial Majesty, we offer this in all obedience, 
abundantly prepared to join the issue and to 
defend the cause in such a general, free, 
Christian Council, for the convening of 
which there has always been accordant ac- 
tion and agreement of votes in all the Im- 
perial Diets held during Your Majesty's 
reign, on the part of the Electors, Princes, 
and other Estates of the Empire. To this 
General Council, and at the same time to 
Your Imperial Majesty, we have made ap- 
peal in this greatest and gravest of matters 
even before this in due manner and form of 
law. To this appeal, both to Your Imperial 
Majesty and to a Council, we still adhere, 
neither do we intend, nor would it be possi- 



THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION 135 

ble for us, to relinquish it by this or any 
other document, unless the matter between 
us and the other side, according to the tenor 
of the latest Imperial citation, can be amica- 
bly settled and brought to Christian concord, 
of which this also is our solemn and public 
testimony/ ' 

The very first article ratifies the decree of 
the Council of Nicaea which asserts the his- 
toric doctrine of the Trinity, and it con- 
demns all the heresies which in times past 
have sprung up against it. 

The doctrine of original sin is strongly em- 
phasized, and it is asserted without qualifica- 
tion that man cannot be justified before God 
by his own strength, merit or works, but 
solely for Christ's sake through faith, which 
may be obtained by the Word of God and 
the sacraments. 

Regarding the doctrine of the Church, it is 
properly the congregation of the saints and 
true believers, in which the Gospel is rightly 
taught and the sacraments rightly adminis- 
tered; but it is not necessary that human 
traditions, rites or ceremonies, instituted by 
men, should be everywhere alike. In order 



136 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

to show that they were not breaking away 
from the sacramental side of religion, the 
Lutherans affirmed the validity of the sacra- 
ments administered by evil men, that is, 
that the personal character of the priest has 
no relation with the validity of his sacra- 
mental acts. 

Although the existence of the seven sacra- 
ments is not specifically denied, only two are 
mentioned: baptism and the Lord's Supper. 
The statement on the Eucharist is as con- 
servative as it could be made, asserting 
"that the Body and Blood of Christ are 
truly present, and are distributed to those 
who eat in the Supper of the Lord," and re- 
fraining from a denial of transubstantiation. 
The sacraments were ordained, not to be 
marks of profession among men, but rather 
to be signs and testimonies of the will of God 
toward us, instituted to awaken and confirm 
faith in those who use them. "They there- 
fore condemn those who teach that the Sac- 
raments justify by the outward act, and do 
not teach that, in the use of the Sacraments, 
faith which believes that sins are forgiven, is 
required/' 



THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION 137 

With regard to confession the document 
declares that auricular confession is unne- 
cessary — not essential — but that private ab- 
solution ought to be retained. 

"Of Rites and Usages in the Church, they 
teach, that those ought to be observed which 
may be observed without sin, and which are 
profitable unto tranquillity and good order in 
the Church, as particular holydays, festivals, 
and the like. 

"Nevertheless, concerning such things, let 
men be admonished that consciences are not 
to be burdened, as though such observance 
was necessary to salvation. They are ad- 
monished also that human traditions insti- 
tuted to propitiate God, to merit grace and 
to make satisfaction for sins, are opposed to 
the Gospel and the doctrine of faith. Where- 
fore vows and traditions concerning meats 
and days, etc., instituted to merit grace and 
to make satisfaction for sins, are useless and 
contrary to the Gospel/ ' 

In order to show that their teachings do 
not destroy the state or the family, but espe- 
cially require their preservation as ordinances 
of God, . . . "they teach . . . that 



138 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

it is right for Christians to bear civil office, 
to sit as judges, to determine matters by the 
Imperial and other existing laws, to award 
just punishments, to engage in just wars, to 
serve as soldiers, to make legal contracts, to 
hold property, to make oath when required 
by the magistrates, to marry, to be given in 
marriage. 

"They condemn the Anabaptists who for- 
bid these civil offices to Christians. They 
condemn also those who do not place the 
perfection of the Gospel in the fear of God 
and in faith, but in forsaking civil offices; 
for the Gospel teaches an eternal righteous- 
ness of the heart/ ' 

The worship of saints is condemned, since 
" Scripture teaches not the invocation of 
saints, or to ask help of the saints, since it 
sets before us Christ, as the only Mediator, 
Propitiation, High-Priest and Intercessor, 
He is to be prayed to, and hath promised 
that He will hear our prayer. . . ■ ." 

"This is about the Sum of our Doctrine, in 
which, as can be seen, there is nothing that 
varies from the Scriptures, or from the 
Church Catholic, or from the Church of 



THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION 139 

Rome as known from its writers. This being 
the case, they judge harshly who insist that 
our teachers be regarded as heretics. The 
disagreement, how r ever, is on certain Abuses, 
which have crept into the Church without 
rightful authority. And even in these, if 
there were some difference, there should be 
proper lenity on the part of bishops to bear 
with us by reason of the Confession w r hich we 
have now drawn up ; because even the Can- 
ons are not so severe as to demand the same 
rites everywhere, neither, at any time, have 
the rites of all churches been the same; al- 
though, among us, in large part, the ancient 
rites are diligently observed. For it is a 
false and malicious charge that all the cere- 
monies, all the things instituted of old, are 
abolished in our churches. But it has been 
a common complaint that some Abuses were 
connected with the ordinary rites. These, 
inasmuch as they could not be approved with 
a good conscience, have to some extent been 
corrected.' ' 

It is hardly necessary to add that this sec- 
ond part of the Confession is merely a state- 
ment of the things which are taught in the 



140 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

churches and a repudiation of some of the 
teachings of the more radical Protestants and 
of the abuses which have crept into the 
Roman Church. In the third part an at- 
tempt is made to enumerate and explain the 
abuses which have been removed. It is an 
apology for, or a justification of, what the re- 
formers had done. Melanchthon confined 
himself strictly to this purpose, and denied 
himself (what probably would have been a 
pleasure to Luther) the temptation to launch 
a virulent attack on the flagrant corruption 
and abuses of Romanism. 

The laity are given both kinds in the 
Lord's Supper because the usage has the 
commandment of Christ and is hallowed by 
the practice of the early Christians. "This 
usage has long remained in the Church, nor is 
it known when, or by whose authority, it 
was changed/ ' 

The marriage of priests is permitted in or- 
der to avoid the greater evils of incontinence. 
Furthermore it is evident that in the ancient 
Church priests were married men, for Paul 
says that a bishop should be the husband of 
one wife. 



THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION 141 

Regarding the mass, all the usual cere- 
monies are retained, save that the parts sung 
in Latin are interspersed here and there with 
German hymns, which have been added to 
teach the people. The mass is not to be used 
for profit, not to be multiplied, and not to be 
used as a sacrifice. 

Confession is not abolished, and the people 
are most carefully taught concerning the 
faith and assurance of absolution; but an 
enumeration of sins is unnecessary, for it is 
impossible to recount all sins. "If no sins 
were forgiven, except those that are re- 
counted, consciences could never find peace; 
for very many sins they neither see, nor can 
remember/ ' 

Fasts and the observation of traditions are 
left to the will and conscience of each individ- 
ual, but such observances are not necessary 
acts of worship. Every Christian ought to 
" exercise and subdue himself with bodily re- 
straints and labors, that neither plenty nor 
slothfulness tempt him to sin. ,, And such 
discipline ought to be urged at all times, and 
not only on a few and set days. 

The deplorable conditions in the monas- 
teries and the unwarranted conception of 



142 CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER 

monasticism as a higher life and the exag- 
gerated obligation or effect of the vow have 
caused the Protestants to reject the validity 
of the monastic vow. 

The power of the bishops ought to be con- 
fined to preaching the Gospel, the remission 
of sins, and the administration of the sacra- 
ments. A clear distinction is made between 
the power of the Church and the civil power. 
"The power of the Church has its own com- 
mission. . . . Let it not break into the 
office of another; let it not transfer the king- 
doms of this world; let it not abrogate the 
laws of civil rulers; let it not abolish lawful 
obedience; let it not interfere with judg- 
ments concerning civil ordinances or con- 
tracts ; let it not prescribe laws to civil rulers 
concerning the form of the Commonweal th." 
"If bishops teach or ordain anything con- 
trary to the Gospel, the congregations have a 
commandment of God prohibiting obedi- 
ence." 

The Augsburg Confession was conceived 
in a spirit of conciliation. The Lutherans 
wished for nothing but peace and toleration. 
They passed over in silence the vexed ques- 
tions of indulgences, pilgrimages, and excom- 



THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION 143 

munication. The Confession reflected the 
spirit of Luther, who contended only against 
such doctrines and practices which worked 
serious injury to the purity of the Gospel as 
revealed in the Bible. Luther may not have 
been conscious of it, but we see it now, that 
there was no possible basis of compromise or 
reconciliation between those who planted 
themselves squarely on Holy Scripture and 
those who rejected it as the sole rule of 
faith. 

Martin Luther never departed one hairs 
breadth from the principles of the Augsburg 
Confession. Through many trials and trib- 
ulations they had become a living part of 
him; and the vicissitudes and discourage- 
ments of the sixteen remaining years of his 
life could not tear them away. 

On the 18th of February, 1546, when the 
great reformer's eyelids were closing in 
death, Justus Jonas spoke in a loud voice: 
11 Reverend father, will you stand steadfast 
by Christ and the doctrine you have 
preached ?" "Yes," was the last word 
spoken by the man whose devotion to his 
conscience made the world a better place in 
which to live. 



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